Chandigarh: A letter from New Delhi has put Haryana’s electricity department employees on edge again, barely days after they ended a statewide strike.
Union Power Secretary Pankaj Agarwal wrote to Haryana Chief Secretary Anurag Rastogi 19 October, asking the state to speed up the listing of its four power utilities on the stock market. These are the Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam Limited (UHBVNL), Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam Limited (DHBVNL), Haryana Power Generation Corporation Limited (HPGCL) and Haryana Vidyut Prasaran Nigam Limited (HVPNL).
The letter, a copy of which is with ThePrint, says all four are eligible for listing. It refers to an earlier letter from the Union Power Minister dated 15 May 2026, which had made the same request. Listing, the letter says, will help the utilities attract investment, raise capital for modernisation and depend less on state budgetary support.
Agarwal also pointed to two hurdles. A separate discom for agricultural consumers is yet to be fully operational, he wrote. HPGCL and HVPNL have also not appointed a consultant to take the listing process forward, a step pending “for a considerable period”.
He asked Rastogi for “personal intervention” to clear the pending issues and said the utilities should prepare an activity-wise roadmap and share it with the Centre. Haryana, he wrote, was an early proponent of listing and could set an example in governance and transparency.
Agarwal wrote that the Conference of Power Ministers of States and Union Territories discussed a roadmap for listing state discoms on 12 November 2024. Several states, he noted, have started the listing process since then.
Haryana Power Minister Anil Vij, however, said that he could not comment on it since he has not seen that letter.
“I have learnt about the Power Secretary’s letter to the Chief Secretary after queries from media persons, but I have not so far seen the letter,” Vij said when ThePrint contacted him for his comments.
Vij, who took over as Haryana’s Power Minister 17 October 2024, the day the Nayab Singh Saini government tool oath after the October 2024 Assembly elections for Haryana, said he was not sure whether he attended the 12 November 2024 Conference of Power Ministers of State and Union Territories.
Power employees see the plan for listing as the first step towards privatisation. The Haryana Power Engineers Association is expected to raise the matter at its meeting with Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini 3 November.
The association met at Vidyut Nagar in Hisar, DHBVN’s headquarters, Tuesday. General Secretary Ravinder Ghanghas, Senior Vice-President Baljeet Beniwal and Narayan Prakash, a member of the Bhiwani zonal body, were present. The members rejected any move to list or privatise the four companies. They said the issue was already part of their strike notice. Ghanghas assured members that restructuring of HVPN and other pending demands would also be pressed at the meeting with the government.
Speaking to ThePrint Wednesday, Ghanghas said that the state government has been asked to create a separate discom for agricultural consumers as part of the roadmap for listing of the four companies to discharge DHBVN and UHBVN from the obligation of giving connections to the farmers, who are essentially a loss-making business for the discoms, and will come in the way of their listing in the stock market.
Power employees had recently gone on a statewide strike against the move to give a private company electricity distribution licences in Gurugram and Nuh. Supply was hit in several areas before the chief minister stepped in and the strike was called off.
The state’s own numbers give both sides something to cite.
The Haryana Economic Survey 2025-26 accessed by ThePrint says the two discoms have posted combined net profits every year since 2017-18, after several years of losses. Their combined profit, however, fell from Rs164.64 crore in 2023-24 to Rs 85.76 crore in 2024-25.
HVPNL’s profit after tax rose to about Rs 358.6 crore in 2024-25 from Rs 295.3 crore the year before. The survey puts its transmission system availability at 99.60 percent. HPGCL earned a total income of Rs 7,166.8 crore in 2024-25, with EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortisation) of Rs 709.2 crore.
A senior Haryana government officer told ThePrint that the move is not new. He said the roadmap for listing was first discussed at the Conference of Power Ministers of States and Union Territories on 12 November 2024, and the present letter is a follow-up of that.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
Also read: Haryana power employees call off strike as state govt vows to keep private player away