BSEB, JSEB fight again over Tenughat

patna: a high-level meeting of the eastern region electricity board — comprising the state electricity boards of west bengal, sikkim, orissa, jharkhand and bihar — to discuss many vital issues here on tuesday, turned into a war of words between the bihar state electricity board (bseb) and the jharkhand state electricity board (jseb). instead of discussing broader aspects of optimum distribution of power and strengthening of electricity supply systems and generation, the meeting centred on the bickerings of bseb and jseb, particularly regarding the tenughat vidyut nigam limited (tvnl).according to sources, the tvnl issue was debated hotly between bseb chairman n k agrawal and his jseb counterpart rajib ranjan. their officials also chipped in. the jseb chairman and his colleagues reportedly stated that jseb has all claim over tvnl as the bihar reorganisation act clearly mentions that the property belongs to jharkhand. the bseb chairman and his colleagues asserted that bihar has a genuine claim over tvnl. ultimately, besb officials said that matter may be referred to the union government. the jseb chairman informed the meeting that since its creation, jseb had been spending rs 16 crore per month on day-to-day expenditure of tvnl. apart from that, jseb has paid over rs 5.59 crore to the powere finance corporation as previous loans taken by tvnl. any dispute over the issue would create further problems between both the states, he said. ranjan also said that bseb is sleeping over maintaining grid discipline. only recently, the entire power system had collapsed in jharkhand areas because of overdrawal of power by bseb, he alleged. apart from that, he said, besb is not taking any decision regarding handing over employees to jseb after formulating a cadre distribution formula by the two boards. ranjan complained that the functioning of jseb had been badly affected because of paucity of staff as bseb , which had agreed to transfer the services of over 731 employees to jseb, has not taken any tangible action so far. he added that if bseb failed to transfer the staff by february 15, jseb would not accept the services of any employee. bseb officials, however, said that all measures had been taken to transfer employees from bseb to jseb and final decisions are being taken to transfer them soon. although bseb-jseb controversies consumed a major part of the meeting, it also discussed in detail other matters including strengthening of transmission system in the eastern region.