Rs 3.45 crore fine imposed on ‘power thieves’ in Jammu: claims PDD

Drive against power theft 

Rs 3.45 crore fine imposed on ‘power thieves’ in Jammu: claims PDD

Yash Khajuria

JAMMU, Sept 26: Power development department (PDD) claims to have imposed Rs. 3.45 crore on the consumers indulged in the theft of power in Jammu region during past four month.

Officials said that department has recovered Rs 2.42 crore so far and action is being taken against the people involved in the illegal withdrawal of the electricity.

It is pertinent to mention here that in the practice of curbing the power theft in the state the PDD department in the second week of May had issued an order in which they had asked consumers to disclose their load under Volunteer Load Disclosure Scheme (VLDC), and warned of huge penalty if consumers fail to do so.

It shows that the consumers have totally ignored the scheme and showed no interest to disclose their load as only 35000 consumers has disclosed their actual load in between the period i.e. from May - July 2012.

Official of the department have conducted over 13,597 inspections interim the above mentioned period and has imposed penalty of Rs. 3.45 crore against the power defaulters in Jammu division and also recovered Rs. 2.42 crore fine so far. 

“In the absence of data of actual installed load, JKPDD is unable to plan and upgrade the existing transmission and distribution system to cater the actual load. This leads to more interruptions, breakdowns of supply due to overloading of distribution system. Considering the matter and it was been decided to introduce Voluntary Load Disclosure Scheme for Domestic Category and Non-Domestic Commercial Category to give them opportunity to get their unauthorized load regularized, but from whole Jammu Division only 35000 consumers have adopted the VLDS which is not even the 20 % of the total consumers we have”, said Gurbachan Singh, Exe. Engineer PDD.

However, key factor responsible for the failure of VLDS is that the people claimed that if they pay according to the meters, then what is the need to disclose the load.

“We are paying according to the meters, then why should we declare the load under VLDS? “There are many electric appliances at our home which are used occasionally. The VLDS mentions that each and every appliance that is present in our home should be disclosed. When we are not using various electric appliances, then there is no need to disclose it”.

Any official clarification regarding these queries of the consumers is still awaited by the PDD department which has probably resulted the failure of VLDS.