Delhi govt mulling revoking licences of BSES discoms

New Delhi: The Delhi government is considering revoking the licences of BSES discoms due to their "dismal" performance.

"The government is considering revoking their licences due to dismal improvement in their performance despite repeated warnings," a source said.

In a meeting with CEOs of the companies, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had warned that government will take strict action if their performance does not improve, the source said.

Power Minister Satyendar Jain had written to Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group chairman Anil Ambani, last week, over "atrocious" performance and the "unprecedented" power outages across the national capital.

Jain also had asked him to come down to the city for a meeting, alleging that the discoms that supply power to nearly 70 per cent of the city have started "fudging" data to show improvement following stern warnings from the government.

BSES entities BRPL (BSES Rajdhani Power Limited) and BYPL (BSES Yamuna Power Limited) supply electricity to around 12 lakh and 16 lakh customers respectively. The city's power sector was privatised in 2002.

"Performances of BSES so far have been atrocious...The expectation was that you will bring down tariffs and install a world class power system in the capital city of Delhi, which would compare better than power system in any other capital in the world. However, you have failed to do so.

"There are also allegations of corruption and financial irregularities including siphoning off funds by your companies," Jain had said in his letter.

He said despite repeated meetings and warnings to senior officials of BSES, the power situation has not improved. "If there are 10 outages, the daily report from your company shows only 7 and deliberately masks out 3."

The AAP government in its first stint had also written to DERC to do the same.