Discoms file ARRs for 2022-23, withhold filing RST for third year

Revenue gap growing due to increasing costs; Chief Minister has to decide on tariff hike

The two power distribution companies (Discoms) of Telangana — TSSPDCL and TSNPDCL — filed their Aggregate Revenue Requirement for 2022-23 before the Telangana State Electricity Regulatory Commission (TSERC) here on Tuesday.

However, the Discoms did not file the retail supply tariffs (RST) for 2022-23. They filed the RST for 2018-19 last time and since then the same tariff is being extended every year by the TSERC. The Discoms did not file RST for the last three financial years — 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22.

Either the Discoms or the TSERC did not reveal the details of the ARR filed for 2022-23 although the latter stated that the Discoms have filed the ARRs with operational and financial performance, sales forecast, load forecast, power procurement plan for the next financial year, expenditure projects, revenue projects, including revenue from cross subsidy and additional surcharge, estimated cost of service for various consumer categories and revenue gap.

When contacted, officials of the Discoms admitted that there was considerable energy gap in the ARRs filed and the file related to tariff hike proposed by them was pending clearance with the government (Chief Minister). They stated that it was inevitable to increase the tariff since costs of power generation, transmission and others have gone up considerably during the last three years and that the losses were piling up in spite of tariff subsidy given by the government.

The estimated revenue gap for the current financial is put at over ₹10,000 crore and the Discoms are unable to come out of the red in spite of joining the Ujjwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY) in which the State government took over the losses of the Discoms. By joining the scheme in 2017, the State government took over about ₹12,000 crore debt of the two Discoms as of September 30, 2015.

However, the two Discoms have kept piling up debt even after that due to gap in the cost of supply and revenue realisation.

Interestingly, the TSERC, in its official statement, stated that “in order to bridge the revenue gap/strengthen the financial position of the Discoms there is need to enhance the RST”.