Shock therapy at public hearing awes discoms

The public hearing on tariff determination process saw residents geared up to fight the power distribution companies tooth and nail. Avishek G Dastidar reports. The story so far

The public hearing on tariff determination process saw residents geared up to fight the power distribution companies tooth and nail.

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Punching holes in the accounts submitted by the discoms on several aspects, the residents had done their homework. Their aim: any attempt to hike tariff would have to be stopped.

Going through thousands of pages full of fineprint and numbers, residents said that the very basis of any tariff hike was wrong. “The argument by the discoms that they spent way more than they earned, hence the tariff hike, is wrong since we realised that they have hidden earnings and bloated expenditures, manipulating the figures,” said Hemantha Sharma, resident of Lajpat Nagar, who prepared the technical/accounting objections on behalf of RWAs.

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Dubious energy sales
For instance, BRPL has allegedly not included its earnings from institutional consumers like Delhi International Airport Limited and Delhi Jal Board. With this included, residents claimed, the loss figures will come down substantially.

Mismatch in figures
In the individual replies to objections from residents sent through letters, discoms have furnished figures on billing on Enforcement does not tally with figures in the true up petition submitted with the DERC.

While the reply says recovery from theft and meter tampering cases was R56 crore in 2009-10, the true up petition says it is R39 crore.

Process is repetitive hence redundant
Residents said that the true up process initiated for 2008-09 concluded last year with the DERC preparing a tariff order. The order was not communicated, hence, as per a recent high court judgement, could not be treated as a valid “order”. “But as per law, the order draft was ready and prepared by DERC with due diligence, so nothing stops them to take that into consideration now,” said Rajiv Kakria, GK-I resident.