Arvind Sharma
Jammu Tawi, August 26: Fearing strong public opposition, the J&K government has so far not taken a final decision regarding privatization of power sector in the Union Territory (UT) of Jammu and Kashmir despite the passage of more than a year since the announcement was made by the central government.
“Atleast four (4) to five (5) rounds of high level meetings have so far been held regarding privatization of power sector to chalk out the road map,” official sources informed the Northlines wishing not to be named.
“But so far no final decision has been taken,” they said adding, “several modalities are yet to be worked out”.
The decision regarding assets of the PDD is also to be taken. The Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, on May 16 last year, announced the privatisation of power distribution companies (Discoms) in all the Union Territories (UTs) including J&K under the Aatam Nirbhar Bharat.
The reason guiding the decision was that the performance of power distribution and supply verticals was sub-optimal.
It may be mentioned that SBI Capital Markets Ltd was appointed consultant for Jammu and Kashmir for completing the required groundwork by December 2020.
Following the announcement by the union govt, the Jammu and Kashmir administration started the process of privatisation of electricity distribution and allied works in this Union Territory (UT).
The PDD and private consultants had also started house-to-house surveys to collect details of lakhs of power consumers in J&K UT. The process of geo-tagging each and every locality and household was also started for easy identification of power consumers, sources said.
“So far we have not received any official communication from the govt regarding privatization of power sector,” Gurmeet Singh, a senior official of the JKPDCL told the Northlines.
Meanwhile, sources said that the minimum and maximum power tariff in the J&K is too less as compared to the national average. They said after privatization of power sector, the tariff would be hiked by the private players almost more than double the present one.
It may be mentioned that after re-organization of J&K into two UTs in 2019, the unbundling of the Power Development Department (PDD) was one of the first steps taken by the central government.
After unbundling, the government decided to privatize the power sector.
