Prime Minister-designate Manmohan Singh on Thursday said he was against giving free power to farmers as a general policy but the decision of the Andhra Pradesh government was "justifiable" in the wake of difficulties faced by the farmers due to the severe drought in the state.
"This (not levying user charges) cannot become a norm for all public services, wherever possible we must have the listed user charges. There is also scope for cross-subsidisation," he told reporters in New Delhi.
Regarding the Andhra Pradesh government's decision to provide free power to farmers, he said it "probably is justified and we will do it in a transparent manner."
He said the state's budgetary burden, as a result of the free power supply to the farmers, was manageable. "These are practical issues which we will tackle as we go on."
Earlier, he had said farmers in the state got a "raw deal" for many years because of drought and other policy variables.
"Therefore I think some amount of comfort was necessary but that does not mean there should be no user charges," he added.
The newly elected Congress chief minister in Andhra Pradesh, Y S Rajasekhar Reddy, had run his election campaign with the promise that the farmers would be exempted from electricity bills and this would be implemented immediately if his party was voted to power.
Recently, the Tamil Nadu government reversed its earlier decision and decided to supply free electricity to farmers after the AIADMK government led by J Jayalalithaa received a drubbing in the Lok Sabha elections.
A few weeks back, the Congress government in Punjab was forced to roll back the levy of user charges and had started supplying free power despite a heavy burden on the state exchequer.
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