The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has forecast that, for the first time ever, India will have surplus power in the current fiscal.
While this is cause for cheer, some states will continue to face massive power deficit, primarily due to the near-bankrupt state of their discoms. Despite signing up for the Ujjwal Discom Assurance Yojna (UDAY), the Centre’s discom revival plan, some states have remained dangerously complacent in filing tariff petitions with their respective regulators.
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Tariff revision is a necessary exercise that reflects the true cost of supplying power but political expediency has seen it getting short shrift. On the positive side, states that are part of UDAY have shed some of their debt burden by issuing bonds against their accumulated debt. This is likely to provide them fiscal headroom to upgrade creaking distribution infrastructure and also procure more power to serve areas that witness hours of forced power cuts on a daily basis.
