The Uttar Pradesh government informed the Vidhan Sabha on Friday that by December this year, all households in the state, both in rural and urban areas, would get legal electricity connection.
The announcement was made by Power Minister Shrikant Sharma, who also said that by 2022, all the rural consumers would be covered by pre-paid meters and the urban consumers by smart meters.
“The entire expenditure on installation of the pre-paid and smart meters would be borne by the state government and the consumers would not have to pay for it,” he said.
Sharma said that by the year-end, every household, anywhere in the state, would be given legal power connection through meters under the centrally-sponsored Saubhagya Scheme.
Replying to a series of questions on electricity in the Assembly, the minister said that the Power department had already tested the smart meters and around 40 lakh would be installed starting from November in the first phase.
“We will also purchase one crore pre-paid meters to be installed in rural areas,” he said.
Explaining the benefits of smart meters, Sharma said that it would end the problem of faulty bills due to human intervention and check power theft while all the consumers would know their power usage and control it through a mobile app.
Talking about power pilferage and losses of the power discoms, Sharma said that by 2020, UP Power Corporation limited would wipe out all its financial loss, which had increased to Rs 73,986.72 crore in 2016-17.
“Use of katia and tampering with meters are the main cause of line losses resulting to financial losses,” he said and disclosed that the government, through its efforts during the past one year, had managed to reduce line losses by 5 per cent, which was around Rs 3,400 crore, and had increased revenue by Rs 6,000 crore.
The minister also said that the government was going for competitive bidding to purchase electricity to end the high rate at which power was purchased by the previous governments in the state.
“At present, the average rate of power is Rs 3.86 per unit with the lowest rate being Rs 0.63 per unit from the hydro project and the highest Rs 8.58 per unit from 16 private companies,” he said, adding that the purchase price had come down in the state, to Rs 4.12 per unit in 2016-17.
The minister said the government was also going for an agreement to get around 3960 megawatt power from new thermal units at cheap rate. He said these thermal units would be operational from 2020.