BJP Tamil Nadu unit shared a graphic indicating the electricity bill hikes that have occurred over the past 5 years under the Dravidian model government.
Let us take a look at how the hikes were put in place.
Back in 2021, a household consuming 800 units of electricity cost ₹1,280. The same electricity consumption now attracts a bill of ₹4,770 in 2026, a 272% increase in just five years of DMK rule.
சாமானிய மக்களின் சேமிப்பைச் சூறையாடும் @arivalayam அரசின் நிர்வாகச் சீர்கேட்டிற்கு நமது மின்கட்டண உயர்வே சாட்சி..! pic.twitter.com/jLZn339eRS
— BJP Tamilnadu (@BJP4TamilNadu) February 26, 2026
Let us break this down even further.
Four Hikes in Five Years
When the DMK government took office in May 2021, Tamil Nadu’s domestic electricity tariff was one of the most affordable in South India. That changed dramatically in September 2022, when the Tamil Nadu Electricity Regulatory Commission (TNERC) approved a sweeping tariff revision – hiking rates by 12% to 52% in 2022 depending on the consumer category, with domestic consumers in higher slabs bearing the steepest increases.
That was just the beginning. TNERC also embedded an automatic annual escalation mechanism into the 2022 Tariff Order, linking future hikes to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), capped at 6%, to take effect every 1 July from 2023-24 through 2026-27.
What followed was a predictable chain: a 2.18% hike in July 2023 (the state absorbed this via subsidy), a 4.83% hike in July 2024 (no subsidy given), and a 3.16% hike in July 2025, the last of which was announced close to midnight and drew sharp public outrage.
The current slab rate for consumption between 601 and 800 units now stands at ₹9.65 per unit, compared to far lower rates in 2021.
TANGEDCO’s Debt Crisis: The Underlying Driver
The government’s defence has consistently been that tariff hikes were financially unavoidable. TANGEDCO faced a revenue deficit of ₹12,504 crore in 2022-23 alone, even after the massive September 2022 revision, against an aggregate revenue requirement of ₹71,940 crore.
Finance Minister Thangam Thennarasu and other DMK leaders pointed fingers at the previous AIADMK government’s acceptance of the UDAY scheme, a central government power sector debt restructuring programme, as the root cause of TANGEDCO’s accumulated liabilities
Interestingly, the DMK government recently announced free electricity as one of its schemes in the poll-bound state which was slammed by the Supreme Court. On 18 February 2026, when the Supreme Court publicly reprimanded the Tamil Nadu government over an entirely contradictory policy move. Tamil Nadu Power Distribution Corporation Ltd (TNPDCL), backed by the DMK government, had filed a petition proposing to offer free electricity to all consumers regardless of their financial status and challenging the Electricity Amendment Rules 2024 which restrict such schemes.
A bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant was withering in its response. “Who will pay for it? This is tax money,” the court asked, pointing out that the same utility that had been hiking tariffs year after year was now suddenly seeking to give power away for free ahead of elections. “Why are schemes suddenly announced near elections? We will be hampering the development of the nation if we keep on having this largesse distribution,” the bench said, issuing notice to the Centre and all parties involved.
With Assembly elections approaching, electricity pricing is fast emerging as a key political flashpoint in Tamil Nadu.
For ordinary households in Tamil Nadu, the arithmetic is hard to ignore: what cost ₹1,280 five years ago now costs ₹4,770 and the promise of free electricity, once celebrated as a DMK flagship, is now being questioned in the country’s highest court.
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