Delhi govt turns up heat on power cuts, seeks damages

With power shortage haunting residents of the national capital again, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has revived his government’s proposal to penalise distribution companies for unscheduled cuts.

Electricity consumption touched 6,526 MW on Tuesday afternoon, surpassing the previous day’s record of 6,361 MW. This development threw power utilities into a tizzy, even as consumer complaints increased by nearly four times over one week.

Alarmed by the spurt in blackouts across the capital, Kejriwal again brought up the proposal despite the Delhi high court striking it down last year on the grounds of not acquiring then lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung’s nod. The proposal, which mandates monetary reimbursements ranging from ₹25 to ₹100 per hour for households if distribution companies – or discoms – fail to take corrective measures against power outages lasting over two hours, will be taken up at his weekly meeting with lieutenant governor Anil Baijal on Wednesday.

Data accessed by HT revealed that as many as 11,612 power-related complaints were registered by Delhiites from 6 am on June 5 to 6 am on June 6 alone. Of these, 37 pertained to outages that lasted from two to six hours. Officials said the city’s three discoms receive around 4,400 complaints on a typical peak-summer day.

Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said discoms will have to inform consumers about both scheduled and unscheduled power cuts in advance through SMSes and messages posted on their respective websites.

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