Delhi’s discoms to pay users for power cuts now

NEW DELHI: Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday warned discoms that they would be made to compensate consumers even for an hour’s outage if they did not

NEW DELHI: Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday warned discoms that they would be made to compensate consumers even for an hour’s outage if they did not spruce up their supply network in the next six months.

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The warning has come in the wake of the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) issuing an order to discoms and power distribution companies to compensate consumers for unscheduled outages of up to two hours. Penalties can go up to Rs 100 per hour.

Kejriwal said there was need to make discoms “accountable for outages”.

“For now, we have asked discoms to compensate consumers for unscheduled power cuts extending up to two hours, but after six months if there is no improvement in their supply network, government will bring it down to one-hour,” he said.

“Why electricity wires and transfers get damaged only in Delhi? Why are there no such incidents in Washington, London and New York?” he asked.

“We will also make Delhi a world-class city and for this, the accountability of discoms should be fixed for power outages,” he added.

The move followed frequent power outages this month in the midst of an intense heatwave in the Capital. Power companies attributed the regular blackouts to local faults.

According to Monday’s notification by DERC, the default period will be considered from the time someone registers a complaint till the time supply is restored. For a blown fuse or damaged service line, for instance, the power companies will have three hours to fix the fault. If they do not meet the deadline, the complainant will be compensated at the rate of Rs 100 for every subsequent hour.

For a distribution failure impacting up to 50 consumers, the deadline for temporary supply restoration will be one hour and 12 hours for normal supply.