‘URJA’ (Urban Jyoti Abhiyaan)

The Ministry of Power launched the ‘URJA’ (Urban Jyoti Abhiyaan) App, a mobile application. It is a digital initiative that provides information to people of the Distribution Company (DISCOMS) performance in IT-enabled towns. The URJA App envisages generating a sense of positive competition among the stakeholders and urges all concerned stakeholders for improved performance in all consumer-centric parameters.

The URJA (Urban Jyoti Yojana) App was developed to give essential information relating to the Urban Power distribution. It enhances communication of the customers with the power distribution sector on essential parameters that affect the consumers like the timely release of connections, outage information, power reliability, addressing complaints, etc.

Features of URJA App

The Consumer Dashboard of the URJA App states information on the monthly performance of urban towns on the following parameters:
 

• Release of new service connections.
• Consumer complaints redressal.
• The average number and duration of interruptions faced by consumers.
• The number of consumers making e-payments.
• The energy loss or power theft, i.e. AT&C losses.
• The App links the consumers to their respective DISCOMS’ web portal.
• The App provides the customer care number for electricity complaints, i.e. 1912.

The IPDS (Integrated Power Development Scheme) Dashboard empowers DISCOM to provide data about the following:
 

• Go-live towns – Mentions the number of IT Enabled towns.
• SCADA progress – Gives the number of control centres commissioned.
• Urban system strengthening – Mentions the number of projects completed.
• Feeder monitoring – Feeder Data on National Power Portal.
• IPDS sanctions – Gives the amount in Rupees/Crore sanctioned by the government for the IPDS projects.

Objective of URJA App

The government launched the URJA App to provide transparency in the Indian power sector by providing information on the average duration of the power outage, resolving pending complaints, loss of power/theft, and the number of consumers making e-payment. 

URJA App Usage

The App provides four levels in each dashboard, i.e. National level, State level, DISCOM level, and Town level. The dashboard contains various components that are displayed as tiles. Each tile contains information on one of the parameters covered by the App. The App provides detailed information in each tile of its respective component, and the users can view the detailed information by clicking on the heading or numbers on each tile. 

The App displays the latest month’s data by default. However, the users can view the previous month’s available data by selecting the respective month. Data is updated monthly before the 10th of every month for the previous month report (Avg duration of power cuts, consumer complaints pending, avg number of power cuts, consumers making E-payment and pending connections).