The AP High Court has suspended the power ministry’s ‘No LC-No power’ directive that came into effect from June 2019 to protect payments to gencos dues from discoms. Government data showed that country wide discoms’ overdue amount till January 2021 stood at Rs 125,478 crore. The AP High Court order states that the centre cannot coerce discoms to pay gencos. In a detailed order of March 15, 2021, it has also ruled that the centre cannot issue restrictive directions to states halting them from buying electricity from the spot market even if the discoms failed to get letter of credit (LC) issued from banks in favour of the power plants. The AP High Court’s judgement is bound to be challenged by the central government in the Supreme Court since it tears down the payment system the union government had put in place for restoring genco health and for bringing discipline and better management of discoms.
The petitioners in the matter before the AP High Court were AP state discoms. The respondents were the central power ministries and operations entity, and a clutch of renewable power companies.
Meanwhile India’s power sector is facing major threats from the Chinese. Our deeply researched cover story shows how Chinese state sponsored groups were prepositioning cyberattacks for strategic objectives against Indian infrastructure assets, installations and networks at the height of Sino-Indian border tensions last year. The US cybersecurity company, Recorded Future has made detailed revelations about the modus operandi that the Chinese had undertaken for cyber assaults specifically against the Indian power sector. The findings have been shared with the Indian agencies.
Recorded Future based in Massachusetts, US specializes in the collection, processing, analysis, and dissemination of threat intelligence. In its research, Recorded Future has given name to the Chinese threat group as RedEcho. Its targets have been identified as ten Indian power sector organizations, including four of the five Regional Load Despatch Centres (RLDCs) responsible for operation of the electricity transmission grid. Other targets identified included two Indian seaports.
The report reveals it was a high concentration, heavy built campaign targeted at Indian critical infrastructure not with the intent of economic espionage but for strategic objectives. Read the complete details in our cover story – what were the domain names, where were they registered and hosted, the strategies for making the attack successful, high concentration of IPs, the distinct servers used and much more.
