Two news reports in two different newspapers claim different narrative on basis of same facts.  According to a news piece published in Daily Excelsior on September 6 titled ‘PDD only targeting Jammu region, no action in any part of Kashmir valley’. It says that out of total electricity supplied to Jammu and Kashmir divisions, Jammu consumes 45% while Kashmir takes 55% of it. Ironically, the revenue generation follows a reverse trend as Rs. 1111 crore were collected from Jammu and only Rs. 733 crore were collected from Kashmir in the financial year 2016-17. In the previous year, the revenue from Jammu was Rs. 1074 crore while from Kashmir, it was Rs. 835 crore.

An entirely different story was published by Rising Kashmir on May 31, 2017. The story was titled ‘Kashmir’s consumers pay more power tariff than Jammu’. The report gave a lot of details which were missing in the DE story, like the separate numbers of commercial and domestic users, loads allotted to the respective regions etc. For the purpose of comparision, according to RK, domestic, commercial, industrial and other consumers, collectively, from Kashmir paid Rs. 584.27 crore while the collections from Jammu stood at Rs. 578.55 crore. Though the difference is small, still Kashmir pays more than Jammu according to their report. These figures are for the financial year 2015-16 only.

The following chart shows the difference in figures as reported by the two newspapers. The figures compared are for the financial year 2015-16:

Either of two reports can’t be true. Let the reader decide for themselves as to whose version is credible. Even better idea would be introduce the two papers to each other and let them decide among themselves as to whose story is authentic.