(FE)
If slippages were shown by some electricity distribution entities in achieving the Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY) operational targets, power and coal minister Piyush Goyal said on Tuesday, it could be partly because “we now get more accurate data”. The minister indicated that discoms in some states might have to face the music for wrong representation of data. The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh, for instance, had started questioning the state’s power distribution utilities on the unreasonably high consumption rates reported for poor households, he told FE in an interview.
Asked whether power and coal scenario in the country did not deceptively look better than it actually was owing to a slower-than-expected demand growth, the minister said this was a wrong analysis. “Power demand growth (CAGR) from 2004-14 (during the UPA government’s time) was 6.14%. In the last three years of our government, it has been higher at 6.5%,” he said.
