Report of Indian Institute of Public Administration ... - Ministry of Power

Synopsis of State Reports (Vol.-IV)
Study on `Impact of Restructuring of SEBs’
bare LT conductors by armoured cables/HT lines, setting up of 92 special
courts for speedy trial of electricity theft cases.
However, enforcement measures for elimination of theft of electricity have
slowed down in the State. During 2002-03, 3700 FIRs were lodged and an
amount of Rs 61.33 crore was realised. These preventive measures seem to
have resulted in creating an impact, but subsequently, the number of FIRs
lodged has come down with 1,607 FIRs in 2003-04 and 522 FIRs in 2004-05
and the recovery towards the cases involved in theft declined from 78 to 75.8
per cent of the demand raised.
Recovery of Cost of supply: The average annual cost to supply (ACS) and
average revenue realised (ARR) across various categories of consumers in the
State depict that the ACS is increasing at an annual rate of around 10 per cent
taking 1998-99 as the base year. While the Commission, in its tariff order for
2006-07, has projected a marginal gap of around Rs 9.51 crore (for the three
DISCOMs combined), the ARR-ACS analysis for MPSEB for the year 2003-
04 indicates a revenue gap of around 96 paise per unit. This would call for
further rebalancing of the tariffs and/or greater thrust on anti-theft measures
and AT&C loss reduction efforts by the DISCOMs.
Capital Expenditure: The level of investments, post reforms, in the distribution
sector have picked up since 2001-02. The investments have increased from Rs
124 crore in 2001-02 to Rs 302 crore in 2004-05.
Information Technology Initiatives: IT initiatives in the DISCOMs have
remained limited, which has been attributed to financial crunch and shortage of
technical staff and modern office equipment to manage the IT applications. It is
imperative that Utilities encourage the adoption of IT in the field of
Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Consumer Indexing, metering,
data acquisition and management, assets management and customer services. It
has developed in-house IT enabled Revenue Management System (RMS),
which is being introduced in phases and, in the first instance, IT enabled RMS
package has been implemented in 27 divisions of 7 regional headquarter cities
(called priority divisions). The progress made in this direction is slow as
compared to that in States like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra.
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