Cesco disconnects power supply to houses of 34 MLAs

In a major swoop on the high profile defaulters, the Central Electricity Supply Company (Cesco), which is responsible for supply of power in central region of Orissa including capital Bhubaneswar, has snapped power supply to the residence of 34 MLAs for non-payment of their arrear dues amounting to Rs 13 lakh during the last few months.

Twelve of the legislators have since cleared their dues while 22 are yet to make payment, according to Srikant Paikray, chief executive officer, Cesco.

However, he pointed out that no minister or senior government official has so far been found guilty of non-payment though their meters are being checked regularly.

The Cesco chief said, compared to the ordinary consumers, the time limit for clearance of dues was slightly relaxed for the MLAs as they happened to be peoples' representative.

On various measures being taken by the company to curb power theft and augment revenue collection, Paikray said, Cesco had constituted 24 meter testing squads for its each circle and division.

"Spot bills are being issued through state-of-the-art machines for consumers in urban areas since last few months and additional spot billing machines were being procured to cover all areas under Cesco", he added.

Paikray said, Cesco had started remote metering of 650 consumers of large and medium industries utilising 100 kw or more electricity. "This will help detect theft of electricity by meter tampering and improve the revenue collection substantially".

Moreover, all parameters of the meter functioning could be checked on-line anytime, anywhere, he said, adding the system was introduced in November last year and revenue collection increased by about Rs 4 crore in the subsequent month.

However, about 60 cases of power pilferage had been found following installation of remote metering and a penal bill of Rs 8 crore had been charged to the guilty, he added.

Stating that the company had received Rs 235 crore for rural electrification, Paikray said, it had already spent Rs 182 crore which was about 80 per cent of the amount.

The company had also installed aerial bunch conductor in about 2000 km of its power line to monitor power supply to its consumers and proposed to increase the area covered to 10000 km by June end. Cesco had a consumer base of over 8.06lakh of which 85 per cent comprised domestic users.