₹2.45 a unit. That is what a Jammu household on a domestic metered connection now pays for its first 200 units of electricity a month — the rate that took effect on 1 September under the Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission’s (JERC) new tariff order. Set next to what a similar household pays in Delhi or Mumbai, that number holds up rather well.
The story so far
JammuBeat has covered this tariff order in detail already: what changed on your bill from 1 September, and both sides of the argument around it. In short: JERC approved an average 6.83% tariff hike across Jammu Power Distribution Corporation (JPDCL) and Kashmir Power Distribution Corporation (KPDCL) for the 2026-27 control period, to close a ₹2,922.85 crore revenue gap after the J&K government agreed to absorb roughly ₹2,420.78 crore of it as subsidy. Domestic metered rates in Jammu are now ₹2.45/unit for the first 200 units, ₹4.20/unit for 201-400 units and ₹4.60/unit beyond that, plus a fixed charge and, for smart-meter households, a Time-of-Day structure that adds a 20% peak-hour surcharge and knocks 20% off during solar hours (9 am-5 pm). Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has defended the hike as smaller than one imposed under the previous administration (which he put at 14%); the BJP, PDP and Apni Party have all called for a rollback; and the Federation of Chambers of Industries Kashmir (FCIK) has objected that the increase came in higher than industry itself had proposed, with limited consultation.
What’s new: how does that compare to Delhi and Mumbai?
That was the specific question this piece was asked to answer, and it hasn’t been covered here before. Based on currently published tariff schedules for the two cities:
Delhi runs a wider telescopic slab structure — roughly ₹3.00/unit for the first 200 units, rising through ₹4.50 and ₹6.50 to ₹7.00-8.00/unit for consumption above 800-1,200 units, depending on which of the published schedules you read, plus a Power Purchase Adjustment Charge (PPAC) that has run between roughly 23% and 41% depending on the discom (BRPL, BYPL or Tata Power-Delhi), on top of a 5% electricity duty. Critically, the Delhi government layers a subsidy on top: households consuming up to 200 units a month pay nothing, and the 201-400 unit slab gets a 50% rebate, capped at ₹800 a month. No general tariff revision has gone through in Delhi in 2026 — a proposed 7-10% hike has reportedly stayed on hold.
Mumbai is split between two discoms with different rates. BEST’s residential slabs (effective April 2026) start at ₹5.05/unit for the first 100 units and climb steeply — ₹10.25/unit for 101-300 units, ₹13.80/unit for 301-500, ₹15.80/unit beyond that — before wheeling charges, a fuel surcharge and tax are added on top. Adani Electricity, which serves the suburbs, publishes domestic slabs from roughly ₹4.30 to ₹12.94/unit.
Even accounting for the fact that these are aggregated from published schedules rather than a single regulator’s order — and that comparing tariffs across three very different subsidy regimes is inherently imperfect — the pattern holds at every slab: Jammu’s base and mid-range domestic rates sit meaningfully below both cities’ unsubsidised rates, and below Mumbai’s at every published slab. Delhi’s heavily subsidised bottom slab (free up to 200 units) beats Jammu’s only because of that subsidy, not because Delhi’s underlying tariff is lower.
So is there nothing to complain about?
That isn’t the fair reading either, and it is worth holding both facts at once rather than picking one. J&K’s tariffs are genuinely low by the standards of India’s two largest metros — but J&K’s distribution utilities also run some of the country’s highest transmission and distribution losses, which is precisely why JERC has now capped what utilities can pass on to consumers (15% for JPDCL, 19% for KPDCL, with anything above that absorbed by the utility itself rather than billed to households). FCIK’s objection — that the sanctioned hike exceeded what was actually requested, with limited public consultation — is a separate, legitimate process question about how the order was arrived at, not a claim that the resulting rate is unreasonably high in absolute terms. Both things can be true: the rate compares favourably to Delhi and Mumbai, and the process by which it was set deserved more stakeholder input than it got.
What a consumer can actually do
JERC tariff orders are open to public comment during the annual tariff-petition process, when JPDCL and KPDCL file their Annual Revenue Requirement; objections and suggestions can be submitted to the Commission during that window, and past orders have been revised on review. For now, the most direct lever available to an individual household is the Time-of-Day structure itself for anyone on a smart meter above 10 kW load — shifting heavy appliance use to the 9 am-5 pm solar window earns a 20% discount on that portion of the bill, while running them in the 6-9 am or 5-10 pm peak windows now costs 20% more.
Sources: Daily Excelsior; published Delhi and Mumbai (BEST, Adani Electricity) domestic tariff schedules.
