Yogi Adityanath govt in UP spares you from power tariff shock

Won't hike power tariff to overcome losses, says state energy minister

Even as the Yogi Adityanath government has signed the ‘Power for All’ document with the Centre to provide 24x7 electricity supply to all households, state energy minister Shrikant Sharma has clarified that power tariffs would not be hiked this year.

State power utility UP Power Corporation Limited (UPPCL) is saddled with accumulated losses of about Rs 21,000 crore.

“Although the cumulative losses of UPPCL are to the tune of Rs 21,000 crore, we are against the idea of hiking power tariffs and are instead working towards decreasing the line losses,” he told Business Standard on sidelines of a media briefing following the state cabinet meeting here last evening.

He claimed even if the energy department could snap line losses by 10 per cent, there would be no need to hike power tariffs to bridge the yawning revenue and realisation gap. Sharma informed the new dispensation was working earnestly to reform the working of the energy department and ramp up the necessary infrastructure.

UP has always grappled with high aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses of about 40 per cent, which was targetted to be tamed to 10 per cent by 2017. But, this has not happened owing to multiple factors.

Currently, the state government claims the line losses are to the tune of 28 per cent. In fact, this is a misnomer, since a vast majority of power consumers are not regularised nor billed. So effectively, only about half of power consumers are billed in the state.

At the end of 2015-16 fiscal, the accumulated losses of UP power discoms had breached Rs 60,000 crore mark. Under Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY), the state had made budgetary provisions of Rs 40,000 crore to issue bonds to discoms to partly clean their books.

UDAY was projected to accrue total savings of Rs 33,000 crore to UP discoms and enable them to raise fresh capital for future investment. UDAY is a central scheme of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government for the financial restructuring of the country’s ailing discoms, which had collectively accumulated losses of Rs 3,60,000 crore.

After the injection of UDAY, the state discoms are still grappling with high accumulated losses and prospective losses going forward due to steep line losses. Besides, under ‘power for all’, all households are to be provided with power and to ensure full realisation from new consumers would again be a challenging task for discoms.

The state government is now contemplating replicating Gujarat Model to clamp down upon power theft. Under this model, special police stations and vigilance squads would be set up. Such specialised police stations function at Vadodara, Surat, Sabarmati, Rajkot and Bhavnagar to weed out power thieves and pilferers, All India Power Engineers Federation chairman ShailendraDubey said.