Though the pace of reforms was encouraging in the generation and transmission segments, distribution lagged behind, resulting in mounting technical and commercial losses to the utilities (DISCOMs) and dissatisfied consumers. Some of the challenges facing the distribution sector include: high Aggregate Technical and Commercial (AT&C) losses with a national average of around 34%; high theft (annual loss to the tune of around US$4 billion); populist government polices of giving highly subsidised or free power to certain consumer groups; wide gap between billing and collections; network reliability and power quality. To overcome these challenges and bring in world class infrastructure coupled with best practices and performance, the Government of India had embarked on a programme known as the Accelerated Power Distribution Reforms Programme (APDRP), initiated during 2002. In tune with the highly ambitious goals, APDRP attained a flag ship status in the entire distribution reforms during the 10th fiveyear plan of the country with committed funds and pioneering technological initiatives.

This programme has both investment and incentive components provided by the central government. Investment assistance was around 25% and incentive equivalent to 50% of the actual cash loss reduction by SEBs/utilities, is provided as grant. Total funds sanctioned under this scheme were around US$3.5 billion, of which the APDRP component was around US$1.75 billion. Various schemes undertaken under APDRP are for renovation and modernisation of substations, transmission lines & distribution transformers, augmentation of feeders & transformers, feeder and consumer meters, high voltage distribution system (HVDS), consumer indexing, SCADA, computerised billing etc. Out of these various schemes, metering of feeders, DTs and consumers had taken