Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, June 14: The Power Development Department (PDD) has planned to complete metering process of its consumers by March 2016 to get rid of the power theft, highest among the States at 60 per cent, through illegal hooking and unregistered consumers.
According to the PDD’s ‘Revised Business Plan Distribution’ which it has submitted to the State Electricity Regulatory Commission (SERC) for three-year starting FY 2013-14 to FY 2015-16 about the strategy to meter consumers and regularize unregistered consumers as well.
Chief Engineer PDD, Kashmir, Bashir Ahmad Khan told Excelsior in the interest of the public and guidelines, they would be completing the metering of the consumers across the State by year 2016.
“It has been a continuing process from the last few years, but by year 2016 we are completing the metering,” Khan said.
Khan said a plan has been drawn to convert all the unmetered connections to metered ones by the end of the Control Period of FY 2015-16.
The project report of the department said the profile of consumption is also expected to change over the Control Period.
The department claims that the move would likely impact the load, billing and revenue profile in future and the load and number of billed units was expected to shift correspondingly to the metered category.
The total number of connections in the State are 2,015,088, with 517,16 urban and 1,497,920 rural connections.
At present, the PDD has enumerated the number of unregistered connections in the state to 517,103, including urban 152,837, rural 364,266.
By FY 2013-14 about 305,599 consumers will be metered and in FY 2014-15, 167,435 connections would be completed.
SERC Chairperson Basharat Ahmad Dhar told Excelsior that the PDD has submitted the plan to them and “they are committed to us”.
Over those connections which have been electrified in Census 2011 but are not reflecting as registered consumers as per the PDD records, the petition said the department is planning and targeting to initially identify such connections and register them as unmetered consumers in FY 2013-14 and FY 2014-15 and subsequently meter them also by FY 2015-16.
Regarding the slabs on consumption pattern for both urban and rural areas, it said it would be same as existing pattern under targeted slabs.
The plan copy said a buffer of five percent in urban and ten percent in rural connections has been kept for those consumers which either already has been regularized or not traceable.
“…rural connection are initially targeted to be regularized at ¼ kW slab and urban connections are targeted to be regularized at ½ kW slab with consumption pattern assumed as same as existing pattern in these slabs,” the plan copy said.
The PDD has admitted that the power sector has been “heavily affected after the disturbances since the ’90s” and needed various reforms whose pace has been slow as compared to other states due to un-conducive environment for the reforms.
For reforming the sector, the department has hired private consultants, M/S TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute, New Delhi), to prepare a ‘Blue Business Plan’ for Distribution Print for turnaround of the T&D Sector, which focuses on preparing a road map for power sector. The road map is a detailed investment plan and targets for efficiency improvement keeping in view the uniqueness of the political, legal, social and geographical environment of the State.
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