As the Chairman of the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), R.N. Srivastava is an unenviable situation. With the Government setting up an independent regulatory authority, the importance of CEA is expected to diminish. The Government has also taken away the clearance of small power projects from CEA. Srivastava is now trying to handle a restless cadre of power engineers who feel they have been sidelined and that CEA's autonomy is under attack. He is also prearing CEA for the world of private power. In a chat with PRANJAL SHARMA, he emphasises that CEA still has an important role to play in the power sector.* How do you see the role of CEA in the future?* Earlier private companies were setting up generation plants. They have a profit motive. They set up plants in urban areas where they can immediately generate supply and get dividends. Ninety per cent of the installed capacity is public sector. The Electricity Supply Act of 1948 set up the State Electricity Boards at the state level and CEA at the central level. Ultimately it is public money. CEA was create at the centre to ensure that whatever money is spent in the power sector is optimally used. And that the cheapest and reliable form of energy is used. SEBs were entrusted with job of transmission, distribution and retailing of power. long term generation plan.CEA neither owns power plants, neither generates power nor retails electricity. It is impartial, competent and autonomous. CEA is perfectly suited to act as a regulatory body. Even the SEBs can not be regulatory bodies as they are involved in transmission and retailing.The role will change in the sense that we will focus on renovation and modernisation projects.* But what will happen when the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) is set up? There is a powerful school of thought which believes that CEA should be converted into CERC. Do you agree?* As I already said, CEA is in a position where it can straightaway perform regulatory functions. CEA is not an interested party and it has been taking an objective view of power related issues.The regulatory process is mainly in three areas. Regulation of planning process. Some agency has to make demand forecast. When the demand is rising faster than supply, then planning becomes very important, especially when the states have conflicting demands.The other function is construction regulation. An agency has to see that the plants are being set up in the right manner. This is operational regulation. Finally there is tariff regulation. What the Government is thinking done is to give this third aspect to the CERC at central level and similar bodies at the state level. Since this is a purely economic exercise, the Government is thinking of separating it and giving it to CERC.* Can't CEA look at tariff issues as well?* One of the way to look at it could have been, well, let us reinforce the institution of authority with the people who have adequate background in law, economics and engineering. And let them carry out the function of tariff regulation also. Another way of looking at it can be that instead of asking the same people of taking traditional responsibility, let this function be handed to some other body. From the national perspective it does not matter.* The authority and jurisdiction of CEA is being chipped away with smaller projects being taken out of its purview. CEA is being seen as body which delays projects and not clear them.* The demand is growing by 8 to 9 per cent. From the supply side, facilities have to be created at the same. Therefore it was thought that the SEBs be allowed to clear smaller projects according to their expertise, while the larger projects are cleared by CEA at the central level.Before 1990, CEA was looking at Government projects mostly, therefore the entire methodology was different as many issues had been already sorted out. Now that private sector projects are coming in, we have streamlined our procedures to meet the new situation. Right now we have already cleared capacity of more than 16,000 MW. We expect to clear another two to three thousand MW soon.The feedback with me and the Ministry is that the CEA is not responsible for delaying power projects. Nobody is blaming us for delays.We have new rules for clearances which are well-defined. For new projects, we give in-principle clearance in a few weeks, if he broadly satisfies conditions such as state govt permission, state pollution control board clearance. Based on these 6-7 documents we give in-principle clearance. We then ask them to supply the documents which are missing, then the standing committee on project appraisals. And across the table the issues are sorted out. The average time of clearance for utilities has gone down from one year to anywhere between three months to five months.
