Five years on, govt's UDAY scheme fails to power bleeding discoms

The latest audit of state-owned power distribution companies (discoms) for FY19 revealed the financial losses are higher than in FY15, when the government’s ambitious UDAY scheme was launched. The scheme was aimed at financial and operational turnaround of the discoms.

At the operational front, there has not been drastic improvement and almost all targets have been missed — at the national average level. As the Centre doles out special loans for discoms to clear their dues to power generators and plans another reforms scheme, the losses could be a huge dampener for the revival plans.

Shreya Jai compares five-year data that reveals deterioration in the health of discoms.