Chandigarh, October 31 — For the first time since the city’s power distribution was privatised, electricity rates in Chandigarh will rise by 1% beginning November 1, following approval by the Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission (JERC).
The new tariff will remain in effect until March 31, 2026, and will be followed by annual increases of about 2% over the next five years, the regulator said in its latest order.
The Chandigarh Power Distribution Limited (CPDL), which took over the city’s electricity department in February 2024, had sought a 7.57% tariff hike citing an ₹81-crore revenue gap for fiscal 2025–26. It projected a total cost of ₹1,157 crore against expected revenue of ₹1,075 crore under the existing tariff structure.
However, JERC approved only a marginal increase, while directing the private operator to meet strict loss-reduction and service improvement targets before any further revisions. “The tariff structure has been revised within reasonable limits to protect consumer interests,” the order noted.
The commission also retained the fixed charge for domestic consumers at ₹30 per month and the single-phase supply rate at ₹2.75 per unit. CPDL’s proposal to raise fixed charges to ₹32.64 for domestic and ₹45.81 for non-domestic users was turned down.
In a move aimed at easing the burden on small users, CPDL has also restructured domestic slabs, expanding them from three to five categories, each covering 100 units. Officials said the change would particularly benefit low-consumption households, which earlier fell under a broader 151–400 unit range.
“The new slab structure is more rational and protects consumers using limited electricity,” said a senior CPDL official familiar with the order.
As part of privatisation, the city’s entire power distribution and retail business was handed over to CPDL, a subsidiary of Kolkata-based Eminent Electricity Distribution Limited (EEDL).
Consumer rights groups expressed mixed reactions. S.K. Nayar, president of the Indian Citizen Forum, said the JERC had also reorganised industrial categories. “The ‘small power’ category has been abolished. Now, a single LT industrial supply category for up to 85 kWh load has been created with three monthly slabs — 1–500, 501–1,000, and above 1,000 units,” he noted.
Chandigarh currently has 2,34,269 electricity consumers, including over 2 lakh domestic users and more than 26,000 commercial consumers, according to CPDL data.
At a residents’ meeting in July, MP Manish Tewari had objected to any hike, saying the private operator had “not undertaken any significant infrastructure upgrades or expansions since the takeover.”
Before privatisation, the JERC had approved a 9.4% hike in August 2024 and a smaller 25-paise increase in 2022–23. The last major revision before that came in 2018–19, when tariffs were raised across both domestic and commercial categories.
