Madhya Pradesh and Puducherry join UDAY

The central government has signed MoUs with Madhya Pradesh and Puducherry and their respective discoms for their inclusion in the Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY). Madhya Pradesh and Puducherry are likely to have an overall net benefit of around Rs 175.15 billion and Rs 3.78 billion, respectively, owing to savings in interest cost, reduction in aggregate technical and commercial losses, improvements in energy efficiency, among other things, during the turnaround period. With this, 16 states and union territories have joined UDAY and the cumulative discom debt (including central public sector unit dues) to be restructured under the scheme is around Rs 2.51 trillion (as of September 2015).