Outrage over Bescom billing

In a month when jobs are lost and salaries are cut, power supply company gives consumers a shock with excessive billing and bogus explanations

People are up in arms over erratic billing by Bescom, with some bills being inflated by a mind-boggling 16 times.

Shekar Krishna (name changed on request), a resident of Hennur, got a bill of Rs 16,267 for two months (March and April) for a house that had remained unoccupied. The bill for January and February had been less than Rs 600.

Clearly, Bescom’s explanation that it calculated bills on the basis of three months’ average is bogus. When Shekar raised a complaint with the local Bescom office, the executive engineer conceded the meter reading was faulty.

Shekar is not alone. Sheela Nair, a resident of posh Richmond Town, has received a bill three times the normal. She had paid for March on April 10, but that hasn’t been taken into account either. Bescom promised to rectify it within a week, but not everyone can step out and have their erratic billing corrected.

Complaints are pouring in from every neighbourhood in Bengaluru, and it looks like it is not just a case of individual meter-readers making arbitrary calculations.

Blatant harassment

Citizen groups say this is nothing but harassment and exploitation, especially in a pandemic situation.

N S Mukunda, founding president of Citizens Action Forum, suspects the government is exploiting a distress situation, and also paving the way for corruption. “This is a tool to harass citizens. Such mistakes should never have happened in the first place,” he says.

He wants to know why Bescom has not briefed employees on the field on how to calculate dues. “Even if they collect Rs 500 extra from each household with faulty billing, the total will come to some crores,” he explains.

Revenue strategy?

Civic activist Tara Krishnaswamy says state governments, pushed to the brink, are employing unfair practices to mop up revenue. “The Centre has worsened the already grim financial situation by imposing high taxes and increasing fuel prices. The state governments must join together and apply pressure on the Centre rather than apply pressure on their citizens,” she says.

Y G Muralidhar, coordinator of Karnataka Electricity Governance Network and founder and trustee of the Consumer Rights Education and Awareness Trust, says Bescom has no business to change the billing system without the concurrence of the Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission.

“There is a code of billing procedure and they cannot violate it,” he says. He wonders why consumers were not informed about the change of billing procedure, through advertisements in the newspapers and on television.

Bescom sticks by billing

Rajesh Gowda, managing director, Bescom, says the reason for the huge bills could be excessive use of power during the lockdown. “The reading for March and April was done in May. If any payment is made in April, it will be deducted in the bill issued in May,” he told Metrolife.

He concedes the billing may have happened in a higher slab, on the assumption that the extra units are from one month. “Consumers complain by calling 1912. There will also be no disconnections till June 30 and all penalties will be waived if there’s a mistake from Bescom,” he says.

Legal recourse

Jayna Kothari, advocate, says Section 35 of the Consumer Protection Act can be invoked to bring Bescom to book. Consumers can as a group approach the courts, under what is called a class action. “But a class action suit can only happen if the court gives permission. Our courts are not very familiar with it,” says Jayna. She terms the current Bescom billing fault as a case of negligence and deficiency of service, both of which are punishable under the law.

When we called 1912…

Metrolife called Bescom helpline 1912 to see how it handles complaints of erratic billing. However, several calls to the helpline went unanswered.