NEW DELHI: At a time when the Capital's power distribution companies are drawing flak from consumers for its failure to minimise inconvenience to honest customers, especially during the anti-theft drives, the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) has come out openly in their support.

In a letter to the Union Power Ministry, the DERC has stated that "the distribution companies in Delhi have been able to lower their Aggregate Technical and Commercial losses ever since the unbundling of Delhi Vidyut Board was undertaken in July 2002".

Through a chart, the DERC has conveyed that BSES Yamuna Power Limited, which had opening loss levels of 57.2 per cent, had reduced it to 43.89 per cent in 2005-06 as against the target of 45.05 per cent. Likewise, BSES Rajdhani Power Limited had brought down its losses from the opening levels of 48.1 per cent to 35.53 per cent as against the target of 36.7 per cent in 2005-06. And in the case of North Delhi Power Limited, the losses had come down from the opening level of 48.1 per cent to 26.52 per cent as against the target of 35.35 per cent.

The DERC said while the AT&C losses for Delhi as a whole were about 50 per cent in February 2002, they had come down to about 35 per cent on March 31, 2006. "This would imply that an additional amount of more than Rs. 1,000 crores is being recovered by the distribution companies by way of reduced losses,'' the letter said.

Coming out in favour of the much criticised power privatisation process, the letter said: "At the time of privatisation, the Delhi Government was spending about Rs 1,200 crores every year in the operation of the Delhi Vidyut Board. This has since got substantially reduced, and today the Government is only spending on the capital expenditure plans of the generating companies and Delhi Transco Limited.''

Holding out that the savings have been huge, the letter said "this implies that additional funds are now available with the Government for other development schemes''.

Over the four-year period that the discoms have been there, the savings thus total nearly Rs. 4,000 crores.

Incidentally, this is approximately the amount spent by them on infrastructure improvement -- nearly Rs. 2,500 crores by the two BSES companies and nearly Rs. 1,300 crores by the NDPL.

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