The loss-making Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) is yet to recover Rs 123.36 crore from its consumers, of which most are government agencies and high-end consumers. The government agencies owe the undertaking around Rs 20.89 crore.
Under such circumstances, the BEST has started recovering money from consumers, especially the high-enders, who have not paid their bills. The Undertaking has recovered over Rs 10 crore from 1256 high-end consumers within a fortnight.
"Why is there a partiality between private consumers and government agencies? The administration should recover from the government too rather than being lenient," said Ravi Raja, member, BEST Committee.
Defending its stand, the undertaking stated that they have an understanding with other government agencies which is why it is aiming for private consumers.
"We are making efforts to recover the pending amount from all the defaulters," said Surendra Bagde, General Manager, BEST. "We won't cut power supply of the government agencies."
The idea had been suggested by the committee members in order to expedite recovery of dues, he added.
"We have recovered Rs 72.67 crore until December," said a BEST official. "There is a dispute on Rs 13.58 crore worth of electric bills".
Their vigilance team has also been active against those consumers who do not pay electric bills regularly. Between April to December 2018, the BEST detected 1219 cases from which they recovered Rs 659 lakhs while during the same period in 2017, they had detected 1509 cases from which they recovered Rs 1045 lakhs. The BEST has at present 10.34 lakh consumers, which grew by 1.4 per cent as compared to the previous year.