The Modi government’s Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana, or UDAY, has now got 20 states and the national capital to be its part, as seven more states and Delhi agreed to join the scheme.

The scheme, launched in 2015, aims to improve operational efficiencies of discoms, reduce cost of power and interest cost of discoms, and enforce financial discipline on discoms through alignment with state finances.

The prime feature of the scheme is that it allows state governments, owning discoms, to take over 75 percent of their debts as of September 30, 2015 – 50 percent of discom debt to be taken over in 2015-16 and 25 percent in 2016-17.

Earlier 13 states had signed agreements with the centre for this scheme. Now other than Delhi, seven more states – Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Assam, Manipur and Tripura – have also become a part of UDAY.