Forgive electricity bills to domestic electricity consumers during lockdown period: Demand of Indian Consumer Panchayat

Pune, 23rd: All household electricity consumers in the state should be exempted from six months of lockdown bills for a minimum of 300 units per month. Also, the state government should reimburse this amount to MSEDCL. This demand was made by Suryakant Pathak on behalf of Akhil Bharatiya Grahak Panchayat on Monday.

Pathak said the governments of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat had decided to waive 50% of electricity bills for the entire lockdown period, giving some relief to the people there. Similarly, the Maharashtra government has not given any relief yet. On one hand, it is worth considering why the government, which gave huge relief to the common man in two days after the agitation of the workers of ST Corporation, could not give relief to the common man with such a small amount of Rs 5,000 crore.

The number of consumers in the state with electricity bills up to 100 units is up to 1.5 crore. If their electricity bills were waived, there would be Rs 3,000 crore, as well as 2.5 crore consumers using up to 300 units. If all these electricity bills had been waived, a maximum of Rs 5,000 crore would have been paid to MSEDCL.

Also the new service connection size has been fixed at Rs. 3400 for 0 to 5 KW and Rs. 7600 for 5 KW. However, due to an error of 0.5 instead of 5 in the order, all the customers seeking additional load up to 0.5 kW are being charged Rs 7600 instead of Rs 3400 and double the amount is being recovered. As a result, ordinary electricity consumers who get new domestic underground connections are being robbed illegally.
Pathak said that the actual MSEDCL should bring this error to the notice of the commission and rectify it on its own.