Centre expects all states to come under UDAY by next month

The Centre expects all states to approve the Ujwal DISCOMs Assurance Yojana (UDAY) scheme by next month, paving the way for them to issue bonds by March 2017 to tackle their mountings debts, Power Minister Piyush Goyal said on Saturday.

"Goyal expressed positiveness that all states would come overboard by end of November, 2016 so that they can complete the formalities of signing the MoUs by December this year and complete the process of issuing bonds by March, 2017," Power Ministry said in a release.

The Minister was speaking to reporters after the conclusion of the two-day conference of State Power, New & Renewable Energy and Mines Ministers in Vadodara on Saturday, it added.

Under the UDAY so far 17 states/UTs signed the MoU with Maharashtra being the latest.

The combined discom debt, including central PSU dues, that would be restructured in respect of these states is around Rs 2.57 lakh crore, which is around 68 per cent of the total outstanding discom debt as on September 30, 2015.

The Minister expressed confidence that 100 per cent Rural Electrification, including villages in LWE (Left Wing Extremism affected) Districts and dense forests, would be achieved by May 1, 2017, one year ahead of schedule as set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

He informed that Rural Electrification Corporation is in the process of drawing up a scheme for extending long-term basis soft loans to states at a flat rate to electrify all households for both APL and BPL population.

"A National Electricity Plan has been prepared to forecast the actual demand of electricity in real time and to attract new investments in the sector to promote new power generation capacity," Goyal said.

Talking about a new initiative, he said that government would aid the setting up of small solar units by farmers, which would in turn power agricultural pump sets.

Informing about developments in the mining sector, Mines Secretary Balvinder Kumar said Ministry has asked Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Kerala and Uttarakhand to modify their rules to enable auctioning of minor mineral blocks.