Power supply firm focuses on rural grievances

Set up a year ago, the three-member Electricity Consumer Grievance Redressal Forum of the Mysore-headquartered Chamundeswari Electricity Supply Company (CESC) has so far disposed off 16 complaints received from consumers.

Six of these complaints were adjudicated, five in favour of the complainants and one in favour of the CESC. Of the five cases adjudicated, one complainant is pursuing the matter before a regular court. The CESC authorities attended to rest of the complaints when the forum sought replies from them.

With regards to two appeals, the ombudsman upheld the forum's stand. Six of the 16 complaints relate to Mysore city and the rest are from the rural areas.

The forum, headed by a former superintending engineer of the licensee and comprising of a superintending engineer of the licensee and a consumer activist, has held about 20 sittings to hear and adjudicated on the complaints.

The forum, set up in May 2006 by the Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC), under the Electricity Act 2003, had only a chairman for some six months and later the full-fledged body came into existence. The first sitting took place in February 2007.

A major decision taken by the forum is in respect of imposition of a power factor (PF) penalty for three months on Falcon Tyres, Mysore.

After hearing the complaint, the forum decided by 2-1 majority that the penalty was not in consonance with Section 22.02 (A) of the Electricity Act, which stipulates a three-month notice to the consumer to rectify the PF. Hence, it ordered for the refund of Rs 8 lakh collected from the complainant.

In another complaint, the forum ordered the payment of interest at the bank rate for a delay of 205 days in repaying the deposit amount of a consumer and pay him Rs 1,000 as the cost of the complaint.

In another complaint, the forum ordered for payment Rs 500 towards the cost of the complaint. A decision in favour of the licensee was taken in the case where the complainant objected a transformer being installed for his building in his commercial complex.

Justifying the constitution of the consumer grievance redressal fora in the electricity sector, though the number of complaints being received were not commensurate with the objective of the fora, outgoing Chairman R K Keshava Murthy told Business Standard that effective propaganda could result in more complaints and realistic cases, benefiting both consumers and the power supply agencies.

"The forum's decision could help the stakeholder improve its functioning and performance and thus provide better service to its customers. Its image would go up if corrections are taken on the basis of the decisions taken by the forums. The fact that the engineers concerned had attended to the grievances when the forum sought their replies on the consumer complaints are an example of this," he said.

Keshava Murthy underlined the need for a separate courtroom, staff and other infrastructural facilities for better functioning of the forums, though the CESC Forum, he said, was managing with facilities made available at CESC corporate office in Mysore.