Jaipur discom replicates Alwar model to check power thefts

In the mid-2016, Jaipur discom undertook an ‘experiment’ under which the superintending engineer of Alwar circle was empowered to take crucial decisions and have a final say in the matters of his circle.

The objective, said officials, was to reduce the distribution losses (power thefts) and run the circle as a profit centre. Over the last 18 months, the distribution losses in Alwar circle have come down to 17.51% from 29.03% even as the circle has registered a profit of Rs 151 crore by the end of October 2017 against a loss of Rs 133 crore in
2016-17. 

“The Alwar model is now being replicated in the other circles. Alwar is the only circle in the company that has turned around like this,” said Jaipur discom managing director, RG Gupta. 

Jaipur discom recently felicitated Alwar superintending engineer M M Kurmi for the achievement. Apart from Alwar, Jaipur circle is the only one running on profit.

“Alwar is a predominantly agriculture and industrial belt and consumes about 20% of the total power distributed by the company,” Gupta said. Under the Mukhya Mantri Vidyut Sudhar Yojana, the objective is to bring down the distribution losses to 15%. 

Some of the decisions taken by the discom to empower the SEs include not undertaking any transfer of employees including engineers under the SE’s administrative control without his prior consent. Also, no charge-sheet will be served to officers and other employees under SE’s administrative control without his opinion on the proposed charge-sheet. 

SEs have also been empowered to engage ex-serviceman against the vacancy in their circle in order to ensure that a feeder in-charge is posted independently on each 11 KV rural feeder. To prevent any delay in fund allocations, the SE was also empowered to issue the orders up to 50% of the budgeted provision. 

As a result, total losses of Jaipur discom have come down to Rs 322 crore by end of October 2017 as compared to Rs 1,400 crore loss incurred in the last financial year. 

“We hope that by March 2019, we will be able to bring the discom losses down to zero,” state energy minister Pushpendra Singh Ranawat had said. 

While the minister was talking about the losses of all the three discoms – Jaipur, Jodhpur and Ajmer, that stands at Rs 1,981 crore during 2016-17 – the Jaipur discom hopes to come into profit much sooner with replication of the Alwar model in the remaining 11 circles.