Irregularities committed in organised way, indicates UPPCL file noting

LUCKNOW: A senior UP Power Corporation Ltd (UPPCL) director has admitted on files that department’s engineers were operating in a very organised way in committing irregularities while issuing temporary electricity connections for construction work in Noida and Greater Noida.

His observation is being seen as important since he is an insider serving UPPCL in different capacities as an engineer for over last three decades.

“After the inquiry of the status of temporary power connections in Noida and Greater Noida, it is quite clear that the work of releasing such connections without meters, releasing them for short durations and then making entry of certain connections into the official registers to hide the crime was all being done in a very organised manner,” director (personnel and appointment) AK Purvar observes in the file noting marked to the UPPCL managing director on September 28.

In the file noting that HT has accessed, Purvar also suggested a vigilance probe into the whole matter after suspending and transferring all the executive engineers, assistant engineers, junior engineers and the clerical staff concerned in the two concerning electricity divisions in Noida and Greater Noida.

“The matter was subsequently discussed with the UPPCL chairman who deemed it fit to first serve charge sheets on all the 23 engineers and three clerks before taking further departmental action instead of recommending the vigilance probe that, it was felt, may not produce desired results quickly,” a senior UPPCL official pointed.

“It is quite possible that the management terminates services of the accused if they fail to furnish a satisfactory reply to charges,” he added.

Purvar himself is an engineer and his observations that lapses were being committed in a very organised fashion in Noida and Greater Noida has come at a time when power engineers in the state are protesting against the transfer of 23 engineers.

People aware of the issue also said that some of the transferred engineers even challenged their transfer in the Allahabad high court on different grounds but they did not get any relief.

“The court either rejected their pleas or asked them to present their case before the UPPCL management only,” they said. As per the inquiry report that follows the transfer orders, a large number of temporary power connections of as low loads as 2-kw were issued to builders for the construction of multi-storey apartments with no records of metering, billing, extension of duration (most connections were given for a period of three months) etc found. In around 40 cases, 2-kw temporary connections were also given for agriculture work to run 5 hp motors.

Though UPPCL is yet to assess the losses, the deliberate lapses in the release of temporary connections in Noida and Greater Noida is said to have caused a significant loss of revenue to the corporation that is struggling to pay the power purchase cost to the generators because of acute shortage of funds. “UPPCL’s deficit has jumped from just Rs 10,000 crore 20 years ago, when the then UP State Electricity Board was unbundled, to more than Rs 90,000 crore today and the hapless consumers have to pay through their nose to compensate for the widening deficit,” UP Raya Vidyut Upbhokta Parishad chairman Awadhesh Kumar Verma said.