Taking advantage of the 2nd license provisions in the new Electricity Act 2003, two big private utilities in the country, Reliance group’s BSES Ltd. and Tata Group’s Tata Power Company (TPC) applied before the MERC for grant of distribution license. These companies, in near identical applications before the MERC, have asked for distribution license for supplying power to consumers in 5/6 major urban, industrial areas of the state, through own distribution system i.e. through a parallel, (independent of MSEB) network. These small urban, industrial areas (such as New Bombay, Pune, Aurangabad and Nagpur) account for over 50 % of MSEB’s total HT industrial load.  Prayas made detailed submission before the MERC highlighting premature nature of these applications, raising legal and other important questions regarding the area of supply chosen by these companies.Prayas Comments on BSES’s application [see below] and Prayas  Comments on TPC’s application [see below]