Five years after death, discom serves electricity bill of ₹86,000 to former MLA

NOIDA: The Pashchimanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Limited (PVVNL), a power distribution company, has served an electricity bill of whopping ₹86,000 to former MLA Thakur Chhatrapal Singh, more than five years after his death

NOIDA: The Pashchimanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Limited (PVVNL), a power distribution company, has served an electricity bill of whopping ₹86,000 to former MLA Thakur Chhatrapal Singh, more than five years after his death. However, Singh’s family members said that all the outstanding power dues in his name had been cleared in 2016 itself.

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Singh had won the Khurja seat (Jewar was then part of it) as Socialist Party candidate in the assembly elections in 1957. According to Manjit Thakur, grandson of the former MLA, Singh had died on October 18, 2015.

The family lives at Dayanatpur village in Jewar.

Thakur, who is also a local BJP leader, said that he wrote a letter in this regard to the UP energy minister Srikant Sharma. “After my grandfather’s death, who was also a freedom fighter, I went to the PVVNL office on July 9, 2016, and cleared all outstanding dues in his name. After that, we applied for a fresh power connection in the name of my mother Veena Devi, which we got within a week. We’ve been paying our electricity bills regularly. But our family gets disturbed now as the discom has issued us the notice to clear the dues in my grandfather’s name,” Thakur said.

When asked, state energy minister Sharma said that he has asked the PVVNL officials to look into the matter immediately. “I’ve seen the final disconnection certificate issued by PVVNL and asked the discom officials to resolve this issue immediately. Such acts tarnish the image of a leader, who was considered as a high-principled leader in the area,” said Sharma.

Virendra Nath Singh, Noida divisional chief engineer of PVVNL, said that he has got information about the issue on Sunday. “I feel extremely sorry for this error, which is apparently committed by the billing agency outsourced by us. We are looking into the matter and it will be sorted out soon. The guilty officials will have to send a letter of apology to the former MLA’s family,” he said.