Pvt players to distribute power in UP

Faced with a target of electrifying 200 villages in the Agra division by April under the Accelerated Rural Electrification Programme (AREP), the UP power discom, Dakshinanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (DVVNL), has decided to lease out power distribution in these villages to private entrepreneurs on a minimum revenue guarantee of Rs 100,000 per village.

Talking to Business Standard, Kirpal Singh, managing director, DVVNL, said the company had been asked to achieve the target of electrifying at least 200 villages by the end of April this year and considering the fact that most of the electric connections in these villages shall be plain light and fan connections, it was not possible to dedicate manpower for the realisation of revenue from the villages as the company was already facing shortage of manpower to maintain its almost 1.7 million power connections in the region out of which, about 1.334 million connections were domestic light & fan connections.

As a workaround to this situation, he said, the company had decided to hand out franchises of power distribution and revenue realisation of these villages to private entrepreneurs on a minimum guarantee of Rs. 1 lac per village.

According to Mr. Singh, this step would ensure that the rural connections, where the company could face heavy losses due to power theft and non-realisation of dues, will instead, become a significant source of revenue for the company through the private entrepreneurs acting as intermediaries between DVVNL and the rural consumers, who, in turn, shall be offered a handsome commission on the revenue collection and maintenance of the company's power lines.

He said in the supply of power distribution transformers for the rural electrification, the company had decided to give first preference to the Agra based transformer manufacturing units to boost up the electrical appliances business in the town.