UPPCL turns heat on engineers over power theft

Worried over uncontrolled pilferages, the UP Power Corporation Ltd (UPPCL) on Friday directed its field officials to lodge FIRs against consumers who were found involved in electricity theft and restore their power connection only after they paid not only the compounding fee but also the assessment money.

Holding a meeting through the video-conferencing here, principal secretary, energy, and UPPCL chairman Alok Kumar pulled up Faizabad chief engineer, superintending engineer and executive engineer on finding aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses as high as 50% and 72% on Ghosiyana and Waziganj feeders, respectively.

He also asked the concerning officials to charge-sheet area’s executive engineer Ashok Kumar for massive power theft taking place right under his nose.

Kumar asked officials to make it a point that no power connection snapped for power theft was restored till the consumer paid assessment money alongwith the compounding fee.

Power theft is a compounding offence under the Electricity Act. This means a person can deposit the prescribed compounding fee in lieu of immunity to FIR and subsequent arrest. The compounding fee that goes to the state exchequer is realized at the rate of Rs 20,000 per kw if the premises where theft is detected is using an industrial connection, Rs 10,000 per kw if it is a commercial connection and Rs 2,000 and Rs 4,000 in case of agricultural and other connections respectively.

However, an accused cannot escape liability of paying the assessed charges even after compounding of the offence. The accused is given an assessed bill (twice the normal bill) for the energy that he is supposed to have consumed/stolen during last two years from the date of detection of theft.

Assessment charges unlike the compounding fee go to the licencee/power distributor. At present, a consumer is not pressed to pay assessment immediately and his connection is restored after he agrees to get the offence compounded.

He asked officials to identify high losses feeders and launch an intensive drive in cities like Farukhabad, Firozabad, Aligarh, Rampur, Meerut and Muzaffarnagar where line losses were especially high.

Taking feedback on billing, losses and power supply etc in the 20 select cities, Kumar said AT&C losses in these cities had to be brought down to 15% by November. These cities are Lucknow, Bareilly, Faizabad, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Noida, Saharanpur, Allahabad, Gorakhpur, Varanasi, Aligarh, Jhansi, Mathura, Rampur, Banda, Etah, Farukhabad, Firozabad and Kanpur.

Kumar also ordered constitution of teams comprising senior officials headed by four directors to visit districts to monitor work to improve services.

Addressing the meeting, UPPCL managing director Vishal Chauhan said the state government wasv planning to provide 24X7 power to people from October 2018.

“But for this, it is necessary that power theft is curbed effectively,” he said.

He said big defaulters’ power connections must be snapped after serving them notices.