Briefing the media on the Cabinet decision, Higher Education Minister V S Acharya said the capital cost of regularising each IP set was estimated at Rs 70,000.
Only those IP sets that were installed before December 31, 2010, will be eligible for the new regularisation scheme. There are an estimated 1.5 lakh unauthorised IP sets in the State, he added.
Of the Rs 70,000, the owner (or farmer) will have to pay Rs 10,000 plus two months deposit (depending on the horse power of the set) as the beneficiary contribution. The remaining cost will be borne by the State government (Rs 25,000) and the respective electricity supply company (Rs 35,000).
The Energy department will frame other rules, including fixing of the deadline for farmers to avail of the scheme.
The total amount required for implementing the scheme is estimated at Rs 375 crore, he added.
Acharya said the State had about 1.35 lakh unauthorised IP sets in 2003-04. It has not now shot up to 1.5 lakh. Illegal IP sets have posed a big challenge to power utilities in the State as they are causing voltage fluctuation leading to frequent interruption in supply.
According to official sources, illegal IP sets are also causing huge financial losses to the government. A majority of the illegal IP set owners are not clearing their power bills.
As a result, the government’s power subsidy bill is ballooning year after year. The government spent nearly Rs 3,000 crore for power subsidy in 2009-10. Once these sets are regularised, they will be forced to pay up the bill, like any other consumer.
Besides, Acharya said, the Cabinet also approved metering of transformers that feed to IP sets to facilitate a proper energy audit.
Data centre
The Cabinet accorded its approval to set up a State Data Centre at a cost of Rs 58.80 crore in Bangalore under a Central Government scheme.
The Centre will collect and make available all data related to the State and the Central Government functions in the State. The data will also be made available to private organisations and individuals.
Relaxation
The Cabinet ratified the Health and Family Welfare department’s decision to bring in certain relaxations to the Cadre and Recruitment Rules to enable easy recruitment of specialist doctors.
As per the decision, qualification stipulated for recruiting certain categories of specialist doctors, including psychologists, has been relaxed. Besides, some amount of weightage will be given to doctors who serve under contract in rural areas for the recruitment.
The department has plans to ensure availability of specialist doctors even at taluk hospitals. It wants to recruit about 700 specialist doctors for this purpose in the coming days, the Minister said.
Levy lifted
The Cabinet decided to do away with the collection of 1.5 per cent APMC levy imposed on 21 different varieties of timber in the State.
Timber merchants are already paying 12 per cent development charge and 13.5 per cent VAT. Hence, it was decided to scrap the APMC levy, Acharya pointed out.