With major states such as Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Haryana still providing only 17-18 hours of electricity a day to rural consumers, the government’s plan to “ensure 24×7 affordable and quality power for all by March 2019” has gone haywire.

Experts put the blame on the weak finances of the state-owned power distribution companies (discoms), which could not build adequate infrastructure to supply electricity round the clock. The addition of 2.5 crore new household connections through the Saubhagya scheme seems to have exacerbated the situation.

“Discoms are finding it difficult to recruit new people to improve tariff collection as they keep on adding new subscribers, mostly in the far-flung areas,” a power ministry official told FE on condition of anonymity. State-run electricity distribution companies have already reported financial losses of over `15,000 crore in H1FY19— as much as the losses incurred by them during the whole of FY18—signalling a reversal of a declining trend since the launch of the UDAY scheme.

All 36 states/UTs have signed ‘Power for All’ (PFA) agreements with the Union government between 2014 and 2017. Andhra Pradesh, which was the first state to sign the agreement, had “envisaged to cover the entire state under PFA programme in a phased manner and provide 24×7 power supply to all domestic, industrial and commercial consumers for all connected households by October 2016 and all un-connected households by March-2017”.

Uttar Pradesh, which was the last to sign the agreement, planned 24-hour supply across all areas by October 2018.
In a meeting held earlier to track the progress of the 24X7 power programme, Bihar had blamed transmission constraints and poor infrastructure for not meeting the desired result. Karnataka had flagged coal supply shortages and sub-station overloading as the causes of less hours of supply. As of February, only Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and West Bengal were providing 24-hour supply in rural areas.