The Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) remained a non-starter even after nearly two- and-a-half years of launch in Jammu and Kashmir where 102 villages remained unelectrified.
The Centre has approved an amount of Rs 616.59 crore for the state in 2015 under the DDUGJY for 10 districts of Jammu region, nine districts of Kashmir and two districts of Ladakh region.
However, cancellation of tendering process last year and pending litigation in the High Court is proving a major obstacle in the start of the works, a senior official of Power Development Department (PDD) said.
The officer said detailed project reports have been prepared for 21 districts of the state and Messrs REC PDCL has been engaged as Project Management Agency (PMA) for DDUGJY of Kashmir province covering 11 districts and Messrs WAPCOS has been engaged as PMA for Jammu province covering 10 districts.
Initially, he said the tenders for all the 21 districts were floated by the department twice but due to poor response, eight districts were allotted to Power Grid Corporation of India Limited (PGCIL) for execution.
The tenders for remaining 13 districts were again floated and the bids were received and finalised, he said.
However, the officer said the tendering process for six districts in Kashmir division being implemented through project wing Kashmir was cancelled on August 31 last year, subsequent to which the works are under litigation in High Court Srinaar and due to which the department is unable to retender these works.
"As such till the outcome of litigation, the department is unable to retender these projects," he said.
Similarly, the tenders of five districts of Jammu division were also cancelled.
Fresh e-NIT for five districts of Jammu stands uploaded whereas e-NIT for two other districts is under preparation, the officer said.
As per census 2011, he said the total number of unelectrified villages in the state are 102, out of which 58 are in Jammu, 26 in Kashmir and 18 in Ladakh.
"Out of these unelectrified villages, 78 are covered under DDUGJY. In view of the delay in the award of the contracts for the DDUGJY scheme, and to meet the timelines given the centre for electrification of unelectrified villages, the department has taken up 60 such villages departmentally and 18 unelectrified villages taken up by PGCIL," he said.
He said in view of the difficult terrain, no route connectivity in many of tehse 102 unelectrified villages, limited working season and longer high voltage lines maintainability shall always be an issue and thus reliability on on-grid mode shall remain always a challenge.
"To meet the centres timelines for village electrification (December 2019), the department has decided to take up the electrification of 54 unelectrified villages through off-grid connectivity, as per the decision of state level standing committee," he said.
Meanwhile, the officer said energy mapping and energy auditing is subservient to 100 per cent metering at all voltage levels.
"To achieve 100 per cent metering at sub transmission level and sitribution level including feeder, distribution transformer and consumer metering, the department has put in its efforts," he said adding once all the levels are metered, a proper exercise for energy auditing and energy mapping would be carried out.
He said energy auditing and proper energy accounting is included as one of the parameters of Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana (UDAY) scheme.
On transmission and distribution losses, the officer said the PDD has been able to bring down the T&D losses from 61.58 per cent in 2011-12 to 52.87 per cent in 2016-17.
"To plug these losses and bring them to a prudent level various slagship programmes are currently under execution or in pipeline.
These flagship programs mainly focus on the upgradation and strengthening of the transmission and distribution system in the state," he said.
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