In what may affect large parts of the national capital, state-run NTPC Ltd on Wednesday said that it plans to stop electricity supplies to BSES Rajdhani Power Ltd (BRPL) and BSES Yamuna Power Ltd (BYPL) over pending dues.
According to NTPC, since BSES firms owe Rs1,295 crore to the utility as outstanding dues, it has served a regulation notice to stop electricity supplies starting 10 May.
This isn’t the first time that such a notice has been served by NTPC to BRPL and BYPL. Delhi faced a similar crisis last year.
“The payments by the BSES discoms had become irregular for quite some time. The matter was brought before the Honourable Supreme Court of India, who in its judgement dated 26.03.2014 directed the BSES discoms to ensure payments of all current energy bills with effect from 01.01.2014. However, despite clear directions of the Honourable Supreme Court, the dues continued,” NTPC said in a statement.
This comes in the backdrop of predictions of a hotter summer than the previous years by India’s meteorological department.
BRPL and BYPL distribute electricity to around 3.3 million customers in Delhi. NTPC, India’s largest power generation utility, supplies 2,027 megawatt (MW) to these electricity distribution companies (discoms) with an average monthly bill of Rs390 crore.
“These firms have been a chronic case of not paying their dues,” said a senior NTPC executive requesting anonymity.
BSES on its part in a statement issued on Wednesday said, “BSES is under huge financial stress due to non-liquidation of regulatory assets estimated to be over Rs16,000 crore as on 31 March 2016. As compared to this, dues payable by BSES to NTPC is around Rs1,300 crore.”
“The payment of dues to power utilities by BSES discoms is sub judice in the Supreme Court. The judgement in the matter is reserved since February 2015. We are awaiting the Supreme Court judgement, which will clear the path for recovery/liquidation of regulatory assets,” the BSES statement added.
NTPC also supplies electricity to Tata Power Delhi Distribution Ltd, Military Engineering Services (for Delhi Cantonment) and the New Delhi Municipal Council in Delhi. The utility has an installed capacity of 47,178MW and accounts for 16% of India’s power generation capacity of 298,060MW.
The NTPC official quoted above added that most of the states are paying up their dues on time including Jammu and Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh.
