NAGPUR: State discom
MSEDCL has started correcting bills of farmers, who turned up at its camps. The camps started from January 1 and so far, 2,114 out of 5,395 bills have been corrected in Vidarbha. Officials rectified the bills on the spot after going through feeder data.
Several consumer activists had alleged that MSEDCL issues inflated power bills to farmers. According to them, in case of unmetered connections, a farmer having say a 3
HP pump is billed for a 5 HP pump. In case of metered connections, the bill has no relation to the meter readings.
MSEDCL recently launched an amnesty scheme for farmers wherein those paying the principal amount of arrears will not have to pay the interest and penalty. This once again led to demands that the power bills be revised before farmers are asked to clear their dues.
According to the data provided by MSEDCL, 5,395 bills having total Rs 13.45 crore amount were submitted for correction at the camps in Vidarbha. MSEDCL corrected 2,114 bills and the revised bill amount was Rs 2.23 crore.
Some 560 bills were submitted for correction from rural areas of Nagpur district, of which 344 bills were corrected. The total bill amount was Rs 107.62 lakh of which bills of Rs 39.70 lakh were revised. The figure is very low for
Akola district. Some 1,391 bills were submitted but only 114 were corrected.
An MSEDCL official said that sub-divisional offices had been asked to take into account the connected load, meter reading, power consumption on the feeder concerned, hours of use etc while correcting the bills.
Regional MSEDCL officer BY
Khandait will hold a meeting of chief engineers early next week. They will have to report the results of bill correction camps to him. The data thus collected will be forwarded to MSEDCL managing director
Sanjeev Kumar.
Representative Image
