Valley consumers pay more power tariff than Jammu

The domestic and commercial consumers in Valley pay more tariff to Power Development Department (PDD) than the consumers of Jammu division.
According to official documents, 708350 domestic consumers are registered with PDD in the valley.
“The consumers in Valley pay Rs 297.31 crore revenue to the department as compared to Rs. 239 crore paid by 661798 domestic consumers of Jammu region,” it said.
The data pertaining to financial year 2015-16 of PDD highlights disparity in the revenue paid by the non-domestic/commercial consumers of the two regions of the state.
As per the data, PDD received Rs. 125.31 crore from 89351 commercial consumers in Valley during 2015-16 while 92173 commercial consumers of Jammu region paid Rs. 109.31crore during the same period.
It reveals that the load connected to the domestic and commercial consumers in Jammu stands much higher than the load connected to the consumers in the valley.
The load connected to domestic consumers in valley during 2015-16 was 773.82 megawatts while the load connected to consumers in Jammu region during the same period was 828.21 megawatts.
The load connected to commercial users of the valley for 2015-16 was 153.11 megawatts while in Jammu region, the load connected to commercial users stood at 176.21 megawatts.
According to the official documents, State/Central office consumers of Jammu region paid Rs. 177.14 crore to PDD as compared to Rs 141.44 crore by the state/central consumers of the valley
The revenue realized through the LT industrial connections in Jammu during 2015-16 was Rs. 53.1 crores while from the valley, it was Rs. 20.21 crores, the data revealed.
It stated that HT Industrial revenue realized by PDD in Jammu region stood at Rs 245.73 crores while in the valley it was Rs 83.02 crores. It was because of disparity in such connections with Jammu having 569 such connections as compared to just 146 in the valley.
Mueen Ahmad, a young entrepreneur from the valley who runs a food processing industrial unit, said, “It is a well-known fact that the industry scenario in Kashmir is very poor and the government has been hiding behind the situation here. But the reality is that the successive governments have favoured Jammu region.”
In the public water works sector, the revenue realized in Jammu region from both the LT and HT public water works connections during 2015-16 was Rs. 123.89 crores while the revenue realized through the same consumers in valley was just Rs 34.15 crores.
The valley has only 655 LT and HT public water works connections while Jammu region has 1719 such connections.