Gujarat Becomes Tenth State to Join UDAY Scheme

New Delhi

With number of States joining the UDAY Scheme (Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana) reaching the double digit , Shri Piyush Goyal, Union Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy has said in his tweet “ We are progressing towards realizing the Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s vision of 24×7 .”

With Gujarat Government communicating its in-principle to Ministry of Power (MoP) of joining UDAY , Shri Goyal congratulated Hon’ble Chief Minister of Gujarat Smt Anandiben Patel on Gujarat becoming 10th State to join UDAY . Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Jammu & Kashmir , Jharkhand , Punjab and Rajasthan have already joined UDAY Scheme.

Expressing confident of more States joining the UDAY, Shri Goyal further said in his tweet “ All States have expressed strong interest for joining UDAY and are at various stages of getting internal approvals. We remain confident of all States joining UDAY and together creating an Ujwal Bharat .”

In his series of tweets , Shri Goyal said

ABOUT UDAY SCHEME:

The Scheme – UDAY (Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana) has been launched to improve financial and operational efficiencies of power distribution companies (DISCOMs). It envisages to reduce interest burden, cost of power and AT&C losses. Consequently, DISCOM would become sustainable to supply adequate and reliable power enabling 24×7 power supply. The scheme provides that States would take over 75% debt of Discoms, as on 30th September, 2015 in two years.

UDAY has inbuilt incentives encouraging State Governments to voluntarily restructure their debts. These incentives include taking over of DISCOM debt by the States outside the fiscal deficit limits; reduction in the cost of power through various measures such as coal linkage rationalization, liberal coal swaps, coal price rationalization, correction in coal grade slippage, allocation of coal linkages at notified prices; priority/additional funding through schemes of MoP & MNRE; and, reduction in interest burden. UDAY is different from earlier restructuring schemes in several ways including flexibility of keeping debt taken over outside fiscal deficit limit, reduction in cost of power and a series of time bound interventions for improving operational efficiency. UDAY provides for measures that will reduce the cost of power generation, which would ultimately benefit consumers.