The All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) has demanded restructuring and integration of all unbundled power utilities in the larger interest of states for better coordination and consumer services.

The Federation has written to Union Power Minister RK Singh and said the Central Government should introduce a separate section in the National Electricity Policy to integrate the state power sector. Even today, the states can integrate generation transmission and distribution into one company as electricity was a Concurrent Subject.

The letter states that after the enactment of the Electricity Act 2003, different states restructured the state electricity boards unilaterally. There is no uniformity and wide diversity in structure of state power utilities across the country. In some states there have been multiple distribution companies, including Karnataka (five discoms), UP (five discoms), MP (three discoms), Haryana (two discoms) while many states retained the entire state under a single discom. In case of Punjab and Tamil Nadu, generation and distribution were retained as one company while transmission was separated out.

VK Gupta, spokesperson, AIPEF, said the experiment of unbundling of state electricity boards has failed and losses of the distribution companies were increasing and unification was the need of hour.

After unbundling, generation and transmission companies were paying millions of rupees as Income Tax in the name of profit while distribution companies’ financial position has gone from from bad to worse.