Nearly 40,000 Micro, Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (MSMEs) have closed shops in Tamil Nadu on Monday, September 25, protesting against the hike in power tariff by the state government. The MSME Associations along with other protesting organisations, under the banner of the Tamil Nadu Industrial Electricity Consumers’ Federation, are demanding for peak hour charges to be scrapped, fixed charges to be reduced to previous levels and cancellation of multi-year tariff policy. They have also urged the government to not increase the yearly hike over 1 per cent.

Protests are being held across all districts with a large number of industries in Coimbatore, Trichy, Tirupur, Madurai and Erode districts, shutting down their operations. According to the office bearers of Laghu Udyog Bharati in Tamil Nadu, an organisation that works towards protecting micro and small scale industries, around 15,000 manufacturing units and 25,000 service sector units remain shut on Monday. 

The state will lose out on Rs 5,000 crore as revenue on Monday, claimed Sivakumar, Coimbatore District head, Laghu Udhyog Bharati. “Around 3 crore workers including permanent, contract and migrant workers are losing out on their pay today. We have a 7-point-demand for the Chief Minister of TN MK Stalin to consider,” Sivakumar said. 

The protesting groups are also demanding the state government to remove the solar networking fee, and urge the state to consider allowing industries which consume between 12-150 KW of power to directly purchase electricity from private parties. They claim that the MSMEs are already under tremendous pressure as they are still recovering from the increase in power tariff last year. They threatened to intensify the strike if the Chief Minister refuses to address their concerns. 

According to media reports, Chief Minister MK Stalin is reportedly discussing these demands with the advisory committee.