In a unique initiative to compensate consumers for unscheduled “power cuts”, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Government in Delhi has sent a proposal to lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal for his approval. Billed as “power consumer compensation policy”, electricity users will be monetarily compensated by discoms if the unscheduled power cut lasts more than an hour. According to officials, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday cleared the proposal to be sent to the l-G for his nod.
“First hour exemption from penalty to be available only once a day for DISCOMS; it will have to pay Rs 100 per hour per consumer after first two hours of power cuts. Compensation to be provided in consumer’s monthly electricity bill,” Delhi Government official said if the proposal is approved.
“In the case of an unscheduled power cut, the discoms will have to restore the electricity within one hour. And if the provider has failed to do so, shall result in a penalty of Rs 50 per hour per consumer,” the proposal says.
Explaining how the policy will benefit the consumers, a Delhi Government official said that the Government is of the view that power distribution by private players in Delhi should benefit the consumers and uninterrupted power supply for which they pay is their right. “Our Government is confident that the lG will concur with the policy and will endorse this pro-consumer step, which will become a model for other Governments across the country to follow,” the official said.
Elaborating further, Delhi Government in its official statement said, “The exemption of initial one hour from the penalty shall be granted to the discoms only once a day, and in case of recurrence of failure of supply for the same consumer the same day, the penalty shall accrue right from the beginning of the duration of the unscheduled power cut”.
This may be further noted that in case of an individual consumer being affected, the consumer shall be required to file a complaint through SMS, e-mail, phone, app or website and his/her particulars such as name, consumer account (CA) number, mobile number, etc, shall be noted at the time of complaint registration.
The official further said that discom shall then attend to the complaint and will send confirmation message to consumer with restoration date and time.
“Whenever, the permissible time limit is over, the respective compensation amount shall be credited to the CA number automatically without any manual intervention and a message to this effect shall also be sent to consumer. The adjustment of the penalty amount shall be made in the consumer’s monthly electricity bill,” said the Delhi Government official.
“The policy will work like this for consumer or complainant: If the compensation is not credited automatically by the concerned discom, the consumer can approach DERC/CGRF for its resolution and the amount of compensation in such cases shall be Rs 5,000 or five times of the compensation payable whichever is higher” it stated.
“While in case of group of consumers, the discoms shall identify all such affected consumers from their own records and compensation shall be credited to each of such consumer’s CA number as per the time schedule of compensation,” it further stated.