Lt Governor Anil Baijal on Thursday approved a proposal from the Delhi government to compensate consumers for unscheduled power cuts lasting longer than one hour.
"Approved proposal for issue of policy directions regarding payment of compensation to consumers in case of power failure," Baijal tweeted.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal called it an "innovative policy" and said it would make power distribution companies accountable to people.
On Tuesday, Kejriwal had approved the policy to provide compensation to users in case of "unscheduled power cuts by the private power distribution companies" and it was sent to the Lt. Governor for approval.
As per the new policy, in case of an unscheduled power cut, the discoms (power distribution companies) will have to restore the electricity within one hour. Failure to do so shall result in a penalty of Rs 50 per hour per consumer for the first two hours and Rs 100 per hour per consumer after two hours.
The compensation would be provided to consumers in their monthly electricity bills.
In case of a power cut, a consumer has to file a "no current" complaint through SMS, email, phone, mobile application or website, along with name, Consumer Account (CA) number and mobile number.
The power distribution company would then attend to the complaint and send a confirmation message to the consumer.
The respective compensation amount would be then credited to the CA number automatically and a message would be sent to the consumer.
This amount would be then adjusted in the consumer's monthly electricity bill.
--IANS
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