Delhi consumers to be paid for unscheduled power cuts

NEW DELHI: In a major relief to the city dwellers, the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi Anil Baijal on Thursday approved the Arvind Kejriwal government's proposal mandating an hourly compensation of Rs 100 to consumers in case of unscheduled power cuts. "I have approved the proposal for issue of policy directions regarding payment of compensation to consumers in case of power failure," said the LG. In response to this, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said: "This is a revolutionary and a very innovative policy of the Delhi government which will make discoms directly accountable to people."

As per the proposed policy, power discoms will have to pay their consumers for unscheduled power cuts, after the first hour, at an hourly rate of Rs 100.

With the LG's approval, Delhi will become the first city in the country to have the policy to compensate consumers for unscheduled outages. Under the policy, discoms will be exempted from paying penalty in the first hour of an unscheduled power cut. For the next hour, consumers will be paid Rs 50, after which compensation will be paid at a rate of Rs 100 per hour. The first-hour exemption from penalty will be available once a day for the discoms.

There are three private power discoms including the BSES companies BYPL and BRPL, and the Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited (TPDDL) that supply power to the city, barring areas under the New Delhi Municipal Council and the Delhi Cantonment. The compensation earned by the consumers will be adjusted against their monthly power bill.

In case of a power cut, a consumer has to file a "no current" complaint through SMS, email, phone, mobile application or website and along with their 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 with power restoration date and time. After the permissible time limit ends, the respective compensation amount will be automatically credited to the CA number without any manual intervention and a message will be sent to the consumer. Before sending the file to the LG the government observed,

"The Delhi government is confident that the LG will concur with the policy and endorse this pro-consumer step, which will become a model for other governments across the country to follow," a Delhi government official said.