NEW DELHI: The power department of Delhi government has written to the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) to expedite the process of penalising distribution companies for unscheduled power cuts. Delhi became the first city in the country to have a strict policy in place to penalise power discoms for defaults after L-G Anil Baijal in April cleared the Arvind Kejriwal government’s proposal mandating compensation to consumers for unscheduled outages. Now, according to sources, Power Minister Satyendra Jain has written to the DERC to start handing out the penalties.
The DERC will soon inform the discoms — BSES Rajdhani Power Ltd, BSES Yamuna Power Ltd and Tata Power Delhi Distribution Ltd — of the penalties. According to the proposal, the discoms will have to pay Rs 50 per hour for the first two hours of unscheduled power cuts and Rs 100 for each subsequent hour. “The compensation payments will be adjusted against the current or future bills. Exemption of one hour from penal provisions is granted only once during the entire day. In case of recurrence of failure of supply for the same consumer on same day, the penalty will commence right from the beginning of the unscheduled power cut. There will be no exemption for any duration for restoration of repeated failure of supply,” the policy states.
“If a discom denies compensation, an appeal can be filed with DERC or the Consumer Grievance Redressal Forum by the consumer,” a power department official said. The amount of compensation in such cases will be Rs 5,000 or five times of the compensation payable, whichever is higher.
The affected consumers will be required to file a “no current” complaint through SMS, email, telephone, mobile apps or official websites of discoms, giving their particulars such as name, consumer account number and mobile number. The discoms have to compensate the affected persons within 90 days of the date of filing a claim.