Snag in billing server affects 15 lakh consumers in Bihar

The problem, which cropped up on July 30, would take at least another four days to be rectified, say discom officials

PATNA: Around 15 lakh power consumers, across 35 districts of Bihar, including those in Patna, have neither received their energy bills for the previous month nor are they able to pay their bills already generated, following a technical snag in one of the two post-paid billing servers of the north and south Bihar power distribution companies in the state.

The problem, which cropped up on July 30 in the SAP billing server of the two discoms in Patna, would take at least another four days to be rectified, said power officials.

The technical snag has affected spot-billing of energy bills and online payment either through the “Bihar Bijli Bill Pay”, discoms’ mobile application, or online mode.

The snag has affected at least 5-6 lakh consumers under the North Bihar Power Distribution Company Limited (NBPDCL) and 10-12 lakh consumers in the South Bihar Power Distribution Company Limited (SBPDCL) across 63 towns in 35 districts, excluding Muzaffarpur, Gaya and Bhagalpur, said officials.

Consumers, whose energy bills of the previous month had been generated, have not been able to make the payment due to the snag. This will pinch the consumers as they would not only lose the rebate, which the discoms extend for timely payment of energy bills, but also have to pay delayed payment surcharge (DPS) for payment after the due date. The discoms are yet to take a decision on waiver of DPS on energy bills in this case, rued consumers.

However, the NBPDCL, on a contingency basis, has initiated door-to-door collection of the power bill.

“We have extended the doorto-door collection of payment for energy bills even in urban areas. Earlier, this arrangement was confined only to rural areas, but following the snag in the server, we have extended the facility even to urban areas,” said an officer on anonymity.

“This will facilitate payment of consumers whose bills have already been generated,” he added.

Efforts to reach the top brass in the Bihar State Power Holding Company and the two discoms proved futile. Sanjeevan Sinha, managing director, SBPDCL, and Arvind Kumar, SBPDCL general manager (revenue) did not respond to phone calls or text messages.

“We are trying to recover our server. We will let you know once it has been done,” said Chaturbhuj Mishra, chief databased administrator of the SBPDCL, before he hung up.