In a blow to the Aam Aadmi Party’s promise of putting a check on faulty electricity meters, residents’ welfare associations and electricity experts have put a question mark over the Arvind Kejriwal Government decision to check randomly 10,000 fast running electricity meters across the city. “It would be futile exercise.
The testing fast running meters will be a waste of time and Government exchequer,” said an expert in the power department, who had come to attend the meeting on Wednesday.
The meeting was convened by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to finalise terms and reference for conducting test for fast running meters. The meeting was attended by officials of power department and residents welfare associations. Resident welfare associations have stated that the Government decision to randomly check fast running meter is not going to resolve the issue and results will be nil unless defective power distribution system is not rectified.
Kejriwal had earlier announced that an independent agency would be set up in the next couple months to inspect domestic electricity meters and find out if they are running fast. He said the Government would randomly test 10,000 electricity meters across the city based on public complaints.
During the meeting, RWAs contended that former Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit had also asked DERC to conduct a six-month meter testing drive in November 2009 and nothing had come off it. “There should be proper recording of units in the neutral wire by the electronic meters. The earlier mechanical meters did not record flow of current in the neutral wire and only recorded the current flow in the one in use amongst the three phases. We have been asking the DERC since 2009 to stop this practice of fleecing the customers by discoms. These Meters record the highest current flowing in the four wires so if I am using an AC and my neighbour only has a tube light on... the current in his Neutral will be higher because of my AC than in the Phase giving current to the tube light,” Rajiv Kakaria, president of Greater Kailash RWA.