Uttarakhand's power sector got a direct order from the top on Thursday, 29 October 2026: clean up the finances, pay the dues, and make sure the lights stay on this winter. Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami chaired a high-level review meeting at his official residence in Dehradun for Uttarakhand Power Corporation Limited (UPCL) and Power Transmission Corporation of Uttarakhand Limited (PTCUL), issuing a string of time-bound directives to senior officials.

The ₹166 crore gap that triggered the meeting

At the heart of the session was a blunt financial problem. Government departments across Uttarakhand have been sitting on unpaid electricity bills, creating a cash-flow squeeze for UPCL. Dhami directed officials to accelerate recovery of those dues and, critically, to release the remaining approximately ₹166 crore — the balance against supplementary budget allocations already sanctioned — directly to UPCL on priority. That single release, officials were told, must not wait.

The CM also ordered that smart meters already installed in government offices and public buildings be converted to prepaid mode as a structural fix. Budget allocation, staff training, and all supporting arrangements for the prepaid switchover were to be treated as priority tasks, not routine ones.

The unfinished business from 2000 — the UP asset split

One of the longer-standing threads at the meeting was the still-unresolved division of assets and liabilities between Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh — a legacy of the state's bifurcation from UP in 2000. Twenty-six years on, certain power-sector claims between the two states remain in limbo. Dhami pushed officials to move those cases toward swift resolution and to speed up payments tied to ongoing development works.

A separate but related pain point: pending disbursements under the Mukhya Mantri Saur Swarozgar Yojana for work linked to natural disaster damage. The solar self-employment scheme, designed to generate rural livelihoods through solar installations, has seen payments stall in disaster-affected cases. The CM directed that those dues be cleared without further delay.

Winterproofing Uttarakhand's grid

The timing of the review is deliberate. Uttarakhand's hilly terrain makes uninterrupted winter power supply a genuine operational challenge — cold snaps drive up residential demand while mountain infrastructure is harder to repair under snow. Dhami tasked officials with an explicit mandate: maintain seamless electricity supply through the coming winter months and use every available resource efficiently to shore up both corporations' balance sheets before the season peaks.

The push for prepaid smart meters in government buildings, faster inter-departmental bill clearance, and the supplementary budget release together form a coordinated attempt to plug revenue leaks at the distribution end — an approach consistent with national-level power sector reform goals that stress reducing aggregate technical and commercial losses and improving utility cash flows.