Mahavitaran submits revised proposal for UDAY scheme

Maharashtra's state discom Mahavitaran has sent a revised proposal to the state government which now includes financial parameters in a bid to re-join the Centre's UDAY scheme.
"Initially, we had submitted a proposal under the UDAY scheme for operational benefits only. But now we have modified it and sent a revised proposal to the state government yesterday to include financial benefits as well," Mahavitaran Chairman and Managing Director Sanjeev Kumar told reporters here today.
The UDAY scheme envisages the respective states of loss- making dicoms taking over 75 per cent of the state electricity boards' debts as on September 30, 2015 over the next two years.

Debt of nearly Rs 4.3 lakh crore is likely to be taken into their books but will not be calculated as their fiscal deficit.
The scheme, launched in November last year involves taking over 50 per cent of the short-term liabilities of their respective discoms in FY16 and remaining 25 per cent in FY17.
So far, 19 states have given their approval to join the scheme and 10 states, namely, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Punjab, Bihar, Haryana, Gujarat, Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir have signed MoUs for the same.

When asked why the state had initially joined the scheme only for operational benefits, Kumar said, "We are relatively better financially so we had opted for operational benefits. But now, with the scale of jobs we would be undertaking, we thought it would be better to include financial parameters as well."

Mahavitaran has a debt of around Rs 22,000 crore, including over Rs 13,000 crore as long-term debt.
When asked whether it would participate in the state's proposal of levying uniform tariff for Mumbai and its suburbs, Kumar said, "We would not like to participate in this mainly because our residential consumer base in these regions is less as compared to our reach in the rest of the state. If we have to change the tariffs here, we will have to do it across the state."
He further explained that if the discom reduced its tariff, then the government will either have to subsidise Mahavitaran to that extend or we will have to increase the tariffs of our industrial and commercial consumers.