Come winter in Kashmir, electricity becomes scarce. That is not news. For decades, people here have planned their lives around outages, load shedding, and voltage drops once temperatures fall. What is new and deeply worrying is that power scarcity has now become a year-round condition. Even in summer, electricity, a basic necessity of modern life like food and drinking water, is increasingly rationed, unreliable, and expensive.
Against this backdrop, the recent remarks by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, attributing Jammu and Kashmir’s power crisis largely to underreported load, have sparked debate. The implication, subtle or otherwise, is that consumer behaviour, even theft, lies at the heart of the problem.
Accurate load declaration and checking defaulters are significant factors that make a power system functional. But to focus primarily on consumers is to look at the crisis from the wrong end of the wire.
The real failure lies not in homes or commercial set-ups, but in the structure, governance, and neglected infrastructure of Kashmir’s electricity sector.
The official numbers tell a stark story. Jammu and Kashmir records some of the highest Aggregate Technical and Commercial, or AT&C, losses in the country.
Overall losses exceed 40 percent. In Kashmir DISCOM, they hover around 50 percent. The national average is closer to 15 to 17 percent. Such a gap cannot be explained by household underreporting alone. It reflects deep, persistent institutional weaknesses.
These losses are not sudden. They are decades old. They point to systemic leakage rather than isolated misuse.
A closer look shows that much of the loss occurs before electricity ever reaches consumers. One of the most serious and long-ignored gaps has been the absence of comprehensive centralised and feeder-level metering at points where power is received and distributed.
Without this, no utility can accurately track where electricity is lost. Is it a technical loss from ageing equipment? Is it leakage at specific feeders? Is it illegal to abstract upstream? The system simply does not know.
Accountability collapses when losses cannot be localized. In that vacuum, irregular practices flourish. Illegal connections, manipulated loads, and poor maintenance persist, often with the quiet complicity of field-level staff.
These issues were flagged repeatedly over the years by the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Federation of Industries, and other technical stakeholders, including during the era of the erstwhile State Electricity Board. Yet meaningful reforms remained elusive.
Infrastructure Decay Compounds Problem
Outdated transformers, overloaded feeders, and ageing distribution lines contribute massively to technical losses. Many transformers operate far beyond their rated capacity. Lines designed decades ago now serve loads they were never meant to carry.
Modernisation of the distribution network should have begun years ago. Instead, investments have been sporadic and reactive.
Equally telling is the absence of a CAD and GIS-based mapping and monitoring system. Such systems are now standard in reformed utilities across India. They allow real-time monitoring, pinpoint abnormal losses, and identify theft with precision. Their continued absence in Kashmir does not reflect a lack of technology or expertise. It reflects a failure of political and administrative will.
While the debate circles around smart meters and billing efficiency, the sector paying the highest price is the industry.
For industrial units in Kashmir, the core issue is not connected load or contracted demand. It is the simple inability to get reliable power supply when it is needed. This winter, the problem has grown sharper.
Official assessments show Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh facing a projected power deficit of more than 34 percent, with availability around 2,460 megawatts against a demand nearing 3,740 megawatts. Cold weather raises heating demand. Hydropower generation declines seasonally. These factors are real.
What is not openly discussed is how the shortfall is managed. Industrial feeders are the first to feel the pinch. Supply windows shrink. Interruptions multiply. Voltage fluctuates. Whether described as system balancing or maintenance, the result for factories is the same. Production becomes unpredictable.
To keep running, industries turn to diesel generators. The cost difference is crippling. Grid power for industry costs roughly ₹6 to ₹8 per unit. Diesel-based generation pushes that to ₹22 to ₹28 per unit. Even partial reliance on diesel can inflate energy costs by 60 to 80 percent. Margins vanish. Products become uncompetitive. Investment stalls. Jobs suffer.
None of this shows up clearly in official deficit figures or debates about billing discipline. Yet it is one of the strongest deterrents to industrial growth in Kashmir.
This brings us to the most uncomfortable question. How does a power-producing region remain power-insecure?
Electricity generated from projects located in Jammu and Kashmir is largely evacuated to the central grid. The region receives only a limited share of free power, typically around 12 percent. The rest is bought back at all-India market rates, shaped by demand and supply far beyond Kashmir. Power generated on local rivers returns as a priced commodity.
Striking Paradox
Despite hosting power projects, the local industry pays among the highest effective electricity costs in the country. This is before accounting for the added burden of diesel backup, difficult terrain, harsh climate, and political uncertainty.
Concerns deepen when one considers the opacity surrounding many power project agreements. Several projects operate without publicly accessible, clearly scrutinised arrangements. Questions about allocation priorities, local entitlements, and long-term access for regional development remain unanswered.
In this context, attributing the crisis mainly to underreported load is not just incomplete. It is misleading.
Smart meters may improve billing accuracy. Load rationalisation may improve accounting. But neither will fix transmission losses approaching 50 percent. Neither will replace crumbling infrastructure. Neither will resolve an allocation framework that treats a power-rich region as a peripheral buyer.
Electricity policy cannot be reduced to revenue recovery. Power is a core input for development. When productive sectors are denied reliable and affordable electricity, the economy shifts toward dependency, not growth. Subsidies replace enterprise. Young people leave. De-industrialisation sets in quietly.
If reform is the goal, the focus must shift upstream.
Feeder-level and centralised metering is essential to locate losses and enforce accountability. Distribution infrastructure must be modernised to cut technical losses. CAD and GIS-based systems must be deployed to monitor the network in real time. Industrial demand must be ring-fenced, with assured supply and predictable tariffs. Power project agreements must be transparent, with clear priorities for local economic needs.
Without these steps, debates around smart meters will continue to chase symptoms while the disease spreads.
Kashmir’s power crisis is not the fault of one group. It is the accumulated outcome of decades of neglect, weak governance, and policy choices that favored short-term fixes over structural repair. Acknowledging that reality is the first step toward change.
Shifting blame downward may slightly improve balance sheets. It will not restore trust, competitiveness, or growth. For that, the spotlight must return to the crux of the problem, which is the structure and governance of Kashmir’s power sector.
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