Ranchi, Jan 20 (KNN) The much hyped Ujjwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY) of the Modi Government has failed to imbibe operational and financial efficiency in the state power distribution companies (Discoms) again.

Launched with an objective of providing ‘24x7’ power to the people and improving ‘health’ of the Discoms, UDAY provided a soft loan window to the state Discoms who abide to follow an approved roadmap for self sustenance.

Under the UDAY scheme, the Union government is trying to reduce the load of debt from the Discoms, which is tantamount to almost 4.3 trillion rupees.

One of the first state  to  sign for the UDAY, the Jharkhand Government has  again defaulted in clearing outstanding payments of power suppliers.

This in spite of the state availing  benefits worth more than Rs.5300 crores under various components of the UDAY scheme and wiping off more than 75% of the outstanding loan of the state Discom from the balance sheet.

This clearly demonstrate that only supply side management will not eradicate the dismal performances of the Discoms.

In fact bitter pills of operational discipline, cost management and cost based metering have to be administered  to almost all state Discoms, if the Government is really interested to make them efficient.

The issues crucial for the survival of the Discoms were raised by FISME, the national federation of MSMEs, with the power Minister recently.

In the letter FISME requested  the Government to advise the Discoms to immediately adopt double Book Keeping, computerise inventories and put performance of electricity equipment in public domain.

FISME insisted that these three steps alone will have a profound impact on efficiency and transparency of the power sector.

However, riding on populism only, no Government will like to impose such strict measures on the Discoms which will surely hurt the vested interests of unscrupulous suppliers, freewheeling categories of consumers and complacent  bureaucrats.

So the first  indicator of the failure of UDAY has appeared and no surprise if  similar  stories of financial delinquency of the Discoms surface in near future from other states who have subscribed to UDAY. (KNN/ DB)