The Centre is planning to privatise electricity distribution companies (discoms) in the Union Territories (UTs) by January 2021.
The government will also make efforts to privatise a number of discoms in major states such as Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Assam to improve the governance of these state-run entities.
The Centre had announced in May 2020 that power departments and distribution utilities in UTs will be privatised.
Among all the discoms which supply power in the UTs, the largest is located in Jammu and Kashmir, which owed Rs 5,443 crore to power generators as on March-end 2020. The aggregate technical and commercial losses of the Jammu and Kashmir UT stood at 48 percent against the national average of 19 percent.
The government has been pushing discoms to increase private sector participation to achieve higher efficiency. To achieve the target, joint ventures among CPSUs and private players are also being contemplated in the power distribution sector.