BENGALURU: If you thought that once you have registered for Gruha Jyothi, you won’t have to pay anything for electricity from August 1, then you are mistaken. While a consumer will not be billed for the monthly units consumed, if the number is below 200 units, the consumer will, however, have to pay arrears for the months of June and July, as per KERC orders. The consumer will also have to pay arrears for the past three months, which are pending with a prescribed penalty, energy department officials told The New Indian Express.
Consumers, who cried foul at the sudden spike in electricity bills in May, which reflected in the June bill, are again shocked by the July bill, which includes arrears. Officials clarified that till June, various Electricity Supply Corporations (Escoms) were collecting arrears as per KERC orders during Q2 and Q3 of 2022-23. From the month of July, recovery of arrears as per the Fuel and Power Purchase Cost Adjustment (FPPCA) will start, as per the KERC order dated June 2, 2023, from July to December 2023.
To communicate details of arrears to the consumers, various Escoms had put out a government order on their websites, along with the KERC order, said a Bescom official.“If the KERC order of the last quarter of the last financial year was to be billed, then consumers would have to pay hefty electricity bills as the charges were over 90 paise per unit. So we had approached KERC to permit staggering the payment on a monthly basis. This is reflecting as arrears in the bills,” the official said, clarifying that the rate of collection of arrears will differ on quarterly basis for various Escoms.
There will also be instances where arrears will be negative, which will also be passed on to consumers in subsequent billing cycles. Consumers, however, point out that electricity bills have shot up in the past couple of months and are a burden. “We request the state government to either put off collection of arrears or stagger them for a longer duration, by reducing the amount. Escoms can again appeal before KERC for adjustments,” suggested experts.
Registrations cross 1 crore
As per the energy department and e-governance department records, registration for the Gruha Jyothi scheme crossed the one crore mark on July 5, 2023, with 1,00,20,163 consumers recorded by the portal till 11 pm. This went up to 1,01,62,415 consumers till 5.30 pm on July 6.