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| Power liabilities swell as schemes prove unproductive | | | Ishtiyaq Ahmad
Early Times Report
Srinagar, Jan 9: The power liabilities have been swelling in Jammu and Kashmir and have crossed Rs 4500 crore mark.
This is despite several schemes having been introduced in the state without any fruitful results.
To meet the power demand and to reducing the power purchasing cost, the government has launched a scheme where the customers can generate the electricity on their own and feed excess power into the power grid.
The centrally sponsored scheme 'Rooftop Solar Power Plants' of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Government of India, (MNRE) is being implemented by the Jammu and Kashmir Energy Development Agency (JAKEDA) in the state.
The officials said under the scheme the customers who intend to generate solar energy and set up solar plants on roof-tops can get the government subsidy of 70 percent.
"The grid connect roof top solar power plants will generate electricity on own with or without battery back-up support. But so far it has not brought the fruitful results," the official said.
"If any customer is getting an electricity bill of Rs 3000, after installing the roof top solar power plants, there could be around 70 to 80 percent decrease in the power bill."
At the same time, the power liabilities have touched over Rs 4500 crore in Jammu and Kashmir.
"The department has realised only Rs 7000 crore power tariff against the target of Rs 16,000 crore for the last four years in the state," a PDD official said.
For 2013-14, the PDD had set a target of Rs 3344 crore power tariff, it realized only Rs 1700 crore. During 2014-15, the department had fixed a target of Rs 3500 crore but achieved only Rs 1773 crore. The government had set Rs 3700 crore as power tariff during 2015-2016 but received only Rs 1900 crore from the consumers. In 2016-2017 the department realised around Rs 1400 crore from the consumers against the target of Rs 3800 crore.
Similarly during 2017-2018, the department realised around Rs 2000 against the target of Rs 4000 crore.
The trend is almost same in the current as only 50 percent power tariff has been realised against the target of Rs 4200 crore.
The official said that PDD has been warning common people to liquidate balance electricity charges or their installations would be disconnected.
"The common people almost pay as per the aggrement but the government is soft towards the industrialists and politicians who are major defaulters of electricity in the state," the official said.
At the same time, hundreds of crores of rupees have been spent on power purchase over the years.
In 2012-13 expenditure on power purchases was Rs 4103 crore, 2013-14 Rs 4471.96 crore, 2014-15 Rs 5153 crore, 2015-16 Rs 5293 and 2016-17 was Rs 5524 crore. During 2017-18, around Rs 6000 crore was spent on power purchase. The official details reveal that provisions for power purchase has been enhanced to Rs 5261 crore in 2018-19 against the original budgetary provision of Rs 4700 crore, the provision of Rs 5000 crore have been kept in budget estimates 2019-20. |
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