Chief Secretary reviews status of power sector reforms taken across J&K

SRINAGAR: Chief Secretary, Atal Dulloo, on Tuesday had a thorough review of reforms undertaken by the Power Development Department (PDD) across the Union Territory to bring added efficiency in the power scenario besides reducing the AT&C losses considerably.

Principal Secretary, PDD, MD, JPDCL/KPDCL, DG, Resources, Chief Engineer, JPDCL/KPDCL, representatives from NTPC, PESL and other concerned officers attended the meeting held in this regard.

The Chief Secretary emphasised upon the officers to ensure completion of all ongoing works taken up under power sector reforms and those aiming loss reduction without any further delay. He also stressed on further bringing efficiency in billing and collection of revenue to saturate it fully for each feeder.

Regarding pilferage of electricity, the Chief Secretary maintained that the huge gap between the supply of energy and realization of revenue needs to be lessened for overall development of the UT. He observed that the gap runs in several thousand crores of rupees which is unacceptable under any circumstances.

Dulloo asked the authorities to fix responsibility and initiate action against the lax officers in each area where a stark difference is found in billing or collection of revenue. He emphasised for laying focus on enforcement and legal action against the power theft so that the menace is totally eradicated from the UT.

Principal Secretary, PDD, H. Rajesh Prasad, gave an overview of present status of all the reforms initiated in the UT.

He informed the meeting about the status of smart metering and their integration and conversion into prepaid meters. He also threw light on different loss reduction works undertaken here in different districts by implementing agencies like JPDCL, KPDCL, PESL and NTPC.

It was informed in the meeting that PMDP Phase-I of smart metering has been completed and the work on phase 2nd is currently going on. It was elucidated that, till date, out of 5,57,994 meters 4,48,931 had been installed in J&K. It was added that 310 feeders have been saturated with installation of smart meters thereby showing a considerable improvement in reduction of AT&C losses.

Further, under Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS) phase-3, it was revealed that more than 7.5 lakh meters had to be installed for which survey has been completed by both the discoms.

It was given out that smart metering and loss reduction works to the tune of Rs 5620 crore had been approved by Ministry of Power for the UT.

Explaining further, the meeting was apprised that works like LT cable replacement, HT line cabling, HT line conductor replacement, high voltage distribution system (HVDS) and segregation of feeders had to be accomplished under this project.

As far as the AT&C losses are concerned, it was revealed that the same had been reduced to 40% during 2023-24 compared to 51% in 2022-23. Besides, it was given out that gap between the Average Cost of Supply (ACS) and Average Revenue Realised (ARR) has further got squeezed to Rs 2.18/kWh in 2023-24 from Rs 2.44/kWh in 2022-23.

Giving details about the enforcement measures taken up by the department, it was said that vigorous enforcement and crackdown on power theft had lead to highest ever revenue realization for the quarter April-June, 2024.

It was disclosed that in addition to making 18,199 disconnections, 6,152 connections were regularized by carrying out 78811 inspections by different electric Divisions of the UT.