Amnesty plan for Najafgarh residents

Residents of Najafgarh, which has the highest rate of electricity theft in Delhi, will pay half the amount due to power distributing company BSES through an amnesty scheme, reports HT Correspondent.

Residents of Najafgarh, which has the highest rate of electricity theft in Delhi at 85 per cent, will pay half the amount due to power distributing company BSES through an amnesty scheme. In return, BSES will be addressing all issues of faulty meters, bad infrastructure installations, etc, resulting in frequent outages, on a priority basis.

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This was a mutual decision reached at a meeting between residents’ representatives, five coucillors, and top BSES officials, including CEO Arun Kanchan on Thursday.

Residents in Najafgarh clashed with BSES officials and demonstrated on the road leading to police intervention on Wednesday following unusually long power cuts. However, BSES had maintained that high rate of theft was causing the sub-stations to trip in the area. Figures for 2007-2008 shows that almost 26 MU (million units) out of 32.5 MU supplied in Najafgarh is stolen, resulting in a loss of Rs 6.5 crore. "The number of registered customers is 40,000", said an official. The distcom had been installing tamper-proof insulated cables, which makes difficult to steam power, hence the agitation, he said.

The agitation had been going on for the past 15 days. It came up in the LG's meeting on law and order. "The LG asked all parties to have a dialogue with each other and work out a solution rather than making this a law and order problem," said an LG house spokesman.