UDAY REVIEW MEETING IN LUCKNOW TODAY

Principal secretary, energy, and UP Power Corporation Ltd (UPPCL) chairman Alok Kumar has called a high-level meeting at the Shakti Bhavan here on Tuesday to review the Centre-sponsored Ujwal Discoms Assurance Yojana (UDAY) and performance of the state’s discoms under it.

From the Centre, Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) executive director Ritu Maheshwari along with her team will also participate in the meeting. She is expected to grill officials on the discoms’ deteriorating performance despite UDAY. After the Centre announced UDAY to bail out the debt-ridden government discoms in various states, a tripartite agreement was signed among the Centre, UP government and UPPCL on Jan 30, 2016.

Under the agreement, the UP government, with the Centre’s support, agreed to take over UPPCL or discoms’ 75% of the Rs 53,2,11 crore debt as at the end of September 2015. The then principal secretary and UPPCL chairman Sanjay Agrawal, who presided over the sector for around four years and was shunted only two weeks ago, had given an affidavit to the Centre committing to do a financial turnaround of discoms. However, discoms’s financial and operational performance has only gone from bad to worse since.

Apart from UP, other states that also opted for the UDAY are Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, J&K, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Punjab, Rajasthan, Bihar, Uttarakhand and Manipur.