Three Delhi discoms shine in Pan-India service ratings

NEW DELHI: The city's private power distribution companies have again emerged at the top in the latest consumer

service ratings

for discoms.
BSES Rajdhani

,

BSES Yamuna and Tata Power

have bagged the top three positions, respectively, with A+ rating, followed by Uttar Pradesh's Noida Power Corporation Limited and Andhra Pradesh Central Power Distribution Corporation Limited at number four and number five spots.

This was the third edition of the survey. The report captured the current status of consumer services by discoms across the country.

The Union power ministry evaluated 62 power discoms - 52 state-owned and 10 private - covering a population base of over 32.4 crore consumers, for their operational reliability; connection and other services; metering, billing and collection; fault rectification and grievance redressal, and 23 sub-parameters.
The ratings were released by Union minister of power RK Singh during the review of planning and monitoring with states last week.

While four discoms secured A+ rating, eight got A, 23 got B+, 19 got B, four got C+, three got C and one power distribution company got D rating.
According to an official, the survey creates a set of parameters related to quality and reliability of electricity supply and consumer services, tracks performance of discoms over a period, develops a spirit of healthy competition among them and nudges them to assess gaps.
According to the report, in "operational reliability", the ministry of power, while assessing the performance of discoms, looked at the number of hours of power supply, interruption index and distribution failure rate. Alignment of regulations with the best industry practices, applications processed online, and average deviation from SOP in processing connections were assessed for "connection and other services". For "metering, billing and collection", the discoms were rated for average days taken for replacement of defective meters, bills generated based on actual reading, bills from non-manual meter reading, consumers receiving billing updates on mobile and the percentage of digital bill payments. For "fault rectification and grievance redressal", the survey looked at the number of consumers registered for 24x7 customer care, average waiting time, consumers receiving outage related updates and grievance redress.
Officials said the three

Delhi discoms

were not only able to supply power 24 hours, but they also kept distribution failure rate at the minimum.