Administrative Council extends amnesty for domestic power consumers till March 2025

Jammu, Mar 14:  The Administrative Council which met here under the chairmanship of Lieutenant Governor (LG) Manoj Sinha approved the extension of Amnesty Scheme-2022 up to March 31, 2025, in favour of domestic consumers of electricity.

The scheme provides for waving off 100 percent interest and a surcharge on the outstanding principal amount.

In J&K, the domestic consumer category comprises over 86 percent of JKPDD consumers and around 50 percent of total energy consumption in J&K is from this category of consumers.

However, almost 30 percent of these domestic consumers (approximately 5.50 lakh) in the sector are either making staggered payments or have not made any payment towards their electricity bills, primarily due to a huge accumulation of outstanding power dues including late payment surcharges and interest which is leading to high commercial losses to JKPDD and Discoms.

The Amnesty Scheme has resulted in the recovery of Rs 235.58 crore from domestic consumers.

Domestic consumers would benefit by waving off the surcharge amount and payments of the principal amount in affordable instalments (EMIs).

The government and DISCOMS would be able to recover the outstanding principal amount which would result in decreasing the ARR and ACS gap and would have a positive effect on lowering AT&C losses too.

Advisor to LG, Rajeev Rai Bhatnagar; Chief Secretary, Atal Dulloo; Principal Secretary to LG, Mandeep Kumar Bhandari attended the meeting.