Power portfolio may be a tough job for Delhi CM designate Arvind Kejriwal

NEW DELHI: After his sweet victory in the assembly polls, AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal may have to swallow some bitter pills if he decides to retains the power portfolio this time as well. Delhi's power department is plagued by a plethora of problems ranging from unrecovered dues amounting to almost Rs 6,000 crore by discoms BSES Yamuna and BSES Rajdhani to delay in implementing vital projects like Delhi's solar policy or even failure to procure sufficient gas for the costly 1,500-MW Bawana project. The fact that Delhi has seen 10 power secretaries in the past five years, including four in just one year under Presidents Rule, hasn't helped matters either.

According to sources, while Delhi Transco and other generation companies have been raising bills for transmission costs on a monthly basis, the payments from the BSES companies have been extremely irregular. A combined bill of approximately Rs 200 crore is raised monthly for transmission and generation costs, but sources say that the last payment made by the BSES companies was a miniscule amount. "The amount has been accumulating since 2009 and the BSES discoms are still regularly defaulting on payments. If you add late pay ment charges and carrying cost, which is included in the combined dues, then BSES discoms are under a huge debt. They make payments whenever they can, but the overall amount that is payable to the Delhi government by BSES is staggering," said a source. Sources claim that the BSES companies were taking liberties in making payments, because the government could not afford the impact of regulating power supply to the discoms. "Unlike the times when NTPC threatened to regulate supply , or when generators like SJVNL stopped supplying power to BYPL, the Delhi government cannot take such a risk with the discoms as it could start leading to blackouts. The government is indirectly bailing out the BSES discoms," said a power sector expert.

A BSES spokesperson said DERC had admitted in its affidavit in the SC that around Rs 9,000 crore is owed to BSES discoms. Once this amount is cleared, Rs 6,000 crore owed to Delhi power utilities will be paid immediately .

The power department also faces a severe management issue. Barring Rajender Kumar's two-year plus term as secretary from 2007 to 2010, the department has seen at least five different changes in the post in the last five years.Prominent bureaucrats like P K Tripathi, D M Spolia, Parimal Rai, Shakti Sinha and R K Verma have also assumed the charge of power secretary from 2011 to 2013.

In the past one year, Puneet Goyal, Arun Goyal, Amit Yadav and finally Shakuntala D Gamlin have taken charge of the department. Insiders say the such changes have affected crucial decisions.