The Government of India, in order to bring about financial discipline in the distribution sector and also to strengthen the distribution infrastructure for providing uninterrupted power supply to the consumers, launched a reform-based result-oriented scheme of Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS) on June 30, 2021.
The scheme is applicable to all state owned distribution companies (Discoms) and power departments.
For Meghalaya Power Distribution Corporation Limited (MePDCL), the funds sanctioned under RDSS include Rs 310 crore for metering, Rs 796 crore for loss reduction. Therefore, the sanctioned total outlay was Rs 1106 crore.
The sanctioned Gross Budgetary Support of metering works was Rs 86.35 crore and the sanctioned Gross Budgetary Support of infrastructure was Rs 717 crore. Thus, the sanctioned total Gross Budgetary Support was Rs 803 crore.
Further, out of total sanction cost under RDSS, an amount of Rs 35.31 crore was released to MePDCL in 2022-23 by the Power Ministry. However, the fund has lapsed as it has not been utilised.
In 2023-24, the Power Ministry released Rs 35.31 crore to MePDCL of which Rs 27.29 crore was utilised.
The RDSS will continue up to the financial year 2025-26. The target of the scheme is to reduce the aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses to pan-India levels of 12-15 per cent and eliminate the ACS-ARR gaps by 2024-25. This would help in bringing financial viability of the Discoms and improve the power sector as a whole.
However, Meghalaya is yet to make significant improvement in reduction of AT&C loss. According to data, the State’s AT&C loss in 2020-21 was 30.88 per cent. In 2021-22, the AT&C loss was 36.15 per cent.
RDSS envisages a Results Evaluation Framework (REF), incorporating performance against result parameters and trajectories for improvement. The REF has two components — Pre-qualifying criteria and Result Evaluation Matrix.
Utilities clearing the pre-qualifying criteria would be eligible for evaluation against the result evaluation matrix, which would determine their eligibility for release of funds for a particular year. The result evaluation framework would be different for each Discom and would be fixed for each year depending on the cumulative performance as well as the annual performance.
The funds for a particular year will be released only if the utility clears the pre-qualifying criteria and the total weighted score is more than 60 marks on the evaluation matrix.
