Unbundling Without Movement: Reasons For The Non-Implementation Of Unbundling And Corporatization Of The State Electricity Department In Goa
Shivam Kishore, B.A. LL.B. (Hons), Amity Law School, Noida
ABSTRACT
This paper examines why the State of Goa, unlike the great majority of Indian States and several comparable Union Territories, has not unbundled or corporatized its power utility in the two decades since Electricity Act, 2003 (“EA 2003”) came into force. Electricity supply in Goa continues to be administered directly by a government department – the Electricity Department, Government of Goa – functioning as a “deemed licensee” under Section 14 of the EA 2003, rather than through independent generation, transmission and distribution companies as Section 131 of the Act contemplates. The paper argues that this outcome cannot be explained by any single cause. It is instead the cumulative product of a deliberately permissive statutory design that leaves unbundling optional rather than mandatory; Goa’s consequent exclusion from the coercive financial and operational levers – such as the Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana (“UDAY”) – that pushed larger, financially distressed States toward restructuring; entrenched political incentives to retain direct departmental control over tariffs and subsidies; sustained resistance from organized departmental labour; the Department’s structural financial fragility despite comparatively strong operational metrics; the absence of any in-State generation asset base; diseconomies of scale associated with creating a full corporate structure for a small consumer base; bureaucratic inertia in cadre management; and the absence of sustained, cross-party political will. Drawing on the Comptroller and Auditor General’s audit findings, Ministry of Power scheme documents, and comparative experience from Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Chandigarh and Puducherry, the paper situates Goa’s experience within the wider, uneven trajectory of India’s power-sector reforms, and closes with a calibrated roadmap for phased implementation.
Keywords: Electricity Act, 2003; unbundling; corporatization; Section 131; Goa Electricity Department; UDAY; deemed licensee; power sector reform; JERC.
