Electricity bills amounting to a whopping Rs 7,975.81 crore have not been paid to the Haryana Power Discoms by the consumers including farmers, residential and domestic consumers and even government-owned bodies.
The electricity bills pending in the state have increased from Rs 7506.59 crore in 2017-18 to 7975.81 crore as on November 2018, as per the Haryana Government’s data.
The pending electricity bills of domestic sector are maximum i.e Rs 5744.77 crore.
Several government departments are the biggest electricity bill defaulters in the state with an arrear of Rs 870.90 crore pending against them.
The outstanding dues to Haryana Power Discoms (Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam and Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam) include Rs 581.45 crore by industrial consumers and Rs 598.63 crore by commercial users. In agriculture sector, electricity bills amounting to Rs 180.04 are pending as on November 2018.
To encourage the consumers to clear their pending electricity bills, the State Government had launched a bill settlement scheme. 13,34,180 consumers opted for the scheme while an amount of Rs 422.37 crore have been paid till January 31, 2019 under the scheme. The State Government has also waived off bills amounting to Rs 3585.64 crore under the scheme, the data stated.
The scheme was meant for facilitating the consumers of domestic category and up to 5 KW of non- domestic (NDS) category. For BPL consumers, the principal amount of last 12 months only was to be paid and rest of the arrears was waived off.
As on November 2018, the number of electricity consumers in the state was 65,32,341. The power consumers were 59,40,158 in 2016-17 which increased to 62,24,537 in 207-18 in Haryana.
The government’s data stated, “The consumption of industrial sector was maximum i.e. 123755.03 million units (MUs) during 2017-18 followed by agriculture sector i.e. 100673.45 MUs. For agriculture sector, subsidy amounting to Rs 7600 crore was given by the State Government.
The electricity consumption was 280787.05 million units upto November 2018 (2018-19) in the state while 2017-18, the consumption was 382329.73 million units.
Notably, the pending power bills have always remained a key election issue in Haryana. The ruling BJP has often accused the opposition of encouraging the people to not pay their electricity bills in the state.
The Indian National Lok Dal, Haryana’s main opposition party has already announced to waive off agriculture related electricity bills and reduce the domestic bills by half, if it comes to power in 2019.
On the other hand, the Congress, in an election year, have been maintaining that it had waived off electricity bills worth Rs 1,600 crore soon after coming to power in 2014.