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With the crucial Lok Sabha and Assembly elections round the corner, the Haryana government has offered a 'one time settlement along with regular supply of electricity' scheme to villages that have pillar box systems erected on their feeder.
According to Ajay Singh Yadav, power minister, Haryana, under the scheme, rural domestic consumers have been given a very attractive offer to get their defaulting amount settled and get power supply in their villages on a feeder for 20 to 24 hours a day, depending to the extent of participation.
He said the scheme would be available to rural domestic consumers existing on a feeder and the group of villages on a feeder would be treated as a unit for the purpose of extending benefit of the scheme.
Yadav said under the scheme, all defaulter consumers of the rural domestic supply category might pay bills only for 40 units per month per kilowatt load for the entire period of default in lump sum in one go without any surcharge.
Such a consumer would have to submit an undertaking to pay subsequent five bimonthly current bills regularly. Twenty per cent of the defaulting amount shall be written off from the bill or consumer's account each time the current bill is paid. However, if due to some unavoidable circumstances, the current bill for one billing cycle is not paid by a consumer, the facility of paying two current bills cumulatively in one go would be permitted.
Yadav said the scheme would be applicable to both connected and disconnected rural domestic consumers who were defaulters as on December 31, 2012. The scheme would be for one year, that is five billing cycles (10 months) and there is permission to accumulate this for two billing cycles if the bill is not paid for one of the billing cycle.
Under the scheme, if 80 per cent of households of all the villages falling on the feeder agree to take part in the scheme by taking their meter outside the premises in pillar boxes and also obtain their new connections (in case of non consumers / permanent disconnected consumers) then apart from benefit of the one time settlement scheme, 20 hours supply would be given to the participating villages falling on the feeder. In case the number of such participants is 90 per cent, 22 hours supply would be provided to the participating villages falling on a feeder.
Similarly, the supply would be increased to 24 hours if the number of households participating in the scheme increases to 100 per cent.
Yadav said wherever there was demand for new connections by non consumers or permanent disconnected consumers, special camps would be organised in the villages itself to release the new connections on the spot. All formalities for release of new connections and availability of meters would be ensured in the camps.
