Centre cannot guarantee power supply to all villages, says official

Centre cannot guarantee power supply to all villages, says official

News:

1. Despite the government pegging India as a power surplus nation, almost every State in the country reels under power cuts.

Important facts:

2.  Centre’s responsibility is to connect households and villages to the power grid , it cannot guarantee the supply of electricity to them.
3. It is the responsibility of State level distribution companies to ensure power availability in every villages
4. The government is working on  24X7 power for all deadline by March 2019.

5. The Centre has claimed 100% electrification of all villages and 83% of all households across the country.

6. However, there are several discrepancies between the actual and the on-paper status of electrification. For example:

• In some cases, the electrification infrastructure such as cables and transformers were stolen days after they were installed, leaving the target village unelectrified in reality
• In other cases, electricity was supplied for just a few hours a day.

7. Reasons :

• Inefficiency of discom, with the costs they incur in the transmission far outweighing revenue.
•  Government data show discoms across the country, on an average, lose ₹0.22 a unit of electricity supplied.
• However , the Power ministry claims that situation is improving under the Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY). And discom losses reduced drastically compared to previous year.
• Financial health of discoms are not viable.
• Some of them have good infrastructure facilities to supply good quality power on a sustained basis.

8. Suggestions:

• Respective State governments continue to give financial support and assurances to the discoms.