Kashmir reeling under darkness with the inauguration of BagliharII

PDD resorting to frequent power cuts, electricity playing hide-n-seek
We’re following last year’s power curtailment schedule: Official
Less than a week after Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, inaugurated the 450 MWs Baglihar-II power project, Valley is groping under darkness with the Power Development Department (PDD) resorting to more than 8-9 hour daily power cuts.
The PDD has not notified any power curtailment schedule and is resorting to unscheduled power cuts. The department has not abided by the State Electricity Regulatory Commission (SERC) directions asking government to improve power supply by working on power reform programmes.
PM Modi inaugurated 450 MWs Baglihar project phase-II in Ramban on November 7. After the inauguration, it was expected that it would help the State in overcoming power deficit. However, the power crises in the Valley have worsened since then.
People across the Valley are complaining that PDD is resorting to frequent power cuts and electricity is playing hide and seek.
PDD officials said they are resorting to power cuts due to fall in the output from the state run hydel power projects.
“A shortfall of 15 percent has been witnessed from the hydel projects run by the Power Development Corporation (PDC) ,” they said.
Power Development Commissioner, Gul Ayaz, said production is expected to go down by one-third of the capacity during the snowfall due to decrease in water discharge.
The bulk of supply is provided by J&K Power Development Corporation, which operates 1211 MWs projects including the 450 Mw Baglihar-II power project inaugurated by PM Modi recently.
According to officials, PDD is unable to meet the demand of 1600 MWs of electricity across Kashmir division.
“The load agreement is for 600 MWs only. We have to largely depend on imports to supply the electricity to the consumers. We are supplying 1200 MWs of electricity. However, given the shortage of resources as of now there remains a shortfall of 400 MWs of electricity,” said an official.
Though PDD blames people for using electricity in excess of the agreed load, however, maximum number of households have not been metered and the power theft takes place even in metered areas due to “nexus between the PDD staff and the public.”
According to officials due to heavy aggregate commercial and technical (AT&C) losses, the PDD is not able to meet the demand of electricity.
“The power theft is also rampant in the areas which have been metered,” they said.
A PDD official said under the Restructured Accelerated Power Development Reforms Programme (RAPDRP), the government was to supply the electricity to the limited number of households from small distribution transformers to check the losses.
“But the RAPDRP programme has not been implemented across Kashmir, even in the capital Srinagar city,” he said.
Power Development Commissioner, Gul Ayaz, said power outages have not been increased in comparison to last year.
“We are following only last year’s schedule of 8-hour power cuts in non-metered areas and 3-hour in the metered areas,” he said.
Ayaz said in the metered areas they are resorting to power cuts as people tamper with the meters and resort to power thefts.
As per government statistics even as the power utilization has increased, revenue generation has been dismal.
“Compared to last year, we have supplied an additional 45 crore units of electricity to the domestic consumers. Nearly 90 percent of the consumption in Kashmir is domestic. Contrary to the Rs 225 crore cost of additional energy, the revenue realization has been only Rs 170 crore,” said a senior PDD official.
As per the recent figures, the revenue realization has declined across Kashmir and is least from Shopian district.
“Till September, the revenue realization was Rs 130.9 crores in Srinagar, Rs 6.85 crores in Shopian,  Rs 38.83 crores in Pulwama, Rs 12.73 crores in Kupwara, Rs 8.55 crores in Kulgam, Rs 8.29 crores in Ganderbal, Rs 14.5 crores in Budgam, Rs 8.52 crores in Bandipora, Rs 31.96 and 26.48 crores respectively from Baramulla and Anantang districts,” the statistics reveal.
The revenue realization has not improved in last two years and the recoveries were significantly lesser.  Contrary to the revenue realization of Rs 301 crore in Srinagar district in the year 2013-14, the revenue realization was 298 crore in the last fiscal year.  Also against the recovery of Rs 96.7 crores from Pulwama in 2013-14, the recovery was only Rs 95.2 crores last year, while as in Kupwara it was 30.69 crore in 2014-15 compared to the 32.9 crore for the previous year and 23.2 in 2014-15 in comparison to 24.7 in 2012-13 from Kulgam district.

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