Power theft: Show-cause notice annoys 112 SDOs, JEs

LUCKNOW : Around 112 sub-divisional officers (SDOs) and junior engineers (JEs) of the state capital have been served show cause notices to explain why they didn’t file FIR against power theft on the same day when they caught people stealing power. The UP Power Corporation Limited has sought the answers from its engineers, which has annoyed them.

However, most of the SDOs and JEs say that they gave the complaint to the police station concerned to register the FIR but the police took its own time in investigation before turning the complaint into an FIR. The technocrats feel that the bureaucrats do not understand their problems and are harassing them.

The UPPCL has sought the details from the engineers about the cases of power theft caught between 2017 and 2022.

Spokesperson of Junior Engineers’ Association Satnam Singh said, “Engineers are wrongly targeted in this matter. Such insensitive behaviour breaks the heart of an honest and hardworking engineer.” He said, “Why are engineers blamed when the police are not registering FIR on the same day?” U.P. Rajya Vidyut Parishad Engineer Union’s general secretary Prabhat Singh said that he had demanded online registration of FIR against power thieves and separate online thanas to receive complaints and lodge FIR. SDO Sparsh Arya and JE Arun Kumar said that they caught electricity theft on April 28 in Indira Nagar and filed a complaint on the same day but the case was registered on May 5. Similarly, SDO Residency Ashish Kumar said that an FIR on his April 8 complaint was registered on April 13.