Budget 2019: UDAY to be reviewed, new power tariff reforms on anvil

This is the first time in years that a finance minister has announced several reforms to reduce consumer electricity tariff

The National Democratic Alliance government’s scheme for turning around the power distribution sector, Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY), will now be reviewed, Finance Minister Niramala Sitharaman said on Friday. “The government is examining the performance of the scheme and it will be further improved,” she said during her Budget speech.

In the past one year, the success rate of UDAY was being debated by several agencies. When UDAY was launched in 2015, the distribution companies cleared their debt through bond issuance against them, but they are back at making losses now. The operational targets of reducing power supply loss and