JOIN USRs 6,000-cr arrears shock gets Bescom acting
The accumulation of a whopping Rs 6,000 crore of arrears has made Bescom crack the whip on defaulters and serve notices to a slew of agencies over the last one week.
According to senior Bescom officials, government agencies are the major defaulters and collectively owe arrears to the tune of Rs 4,800 crore.
“The Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (RDPR) department is the major defaulter with pending dues running up to Rs 3,500 crore. That apart, the civic agencies BBMP and BWSSB collectively owe at least Rs 1,000 crore,” a senior official from Bescom’s revenue department said.
While a few government-run schools and colleges have also defaulted on paying up the electricity charges. However, officials discover that it has been easier to collect the pending amount.
“Schools and colleges don’t hold up dues for too long and pay up soon. However, the dues of many of the urban local bodies and other government agencies have piled up over the last 10 years to 12 years,” the official said.
The residential and commercial consumers together account only for about Rs 300 crore of dues. The data showed that the collection efficiency in these sectors dropped significantly during the pandemic.
In 2020-21, the Bescom’s collection efficiency was at 97.7% with Rs 19,223 crore collected as against the demand of Rs 19,681 crore.
“Owing to the pandemic, we did not go very strict on the collection of dues since the consumers were also going through tough times. However, the residential and commercial consumers started paying up as soon as the situation returned to normalcy,” another official said. With the situation returning to normalcy, the collection efficiency for 2021-22 crossed 100% with a collection of Rs 21,939.6 crore as against the demand of Rs 21,552.99 crore.
Pending dues from government-sponsored programmes such as providing power to Irrigation Pumpsets (IP sets) of farmers at subsidised rates also run up to Rs 1,200 crore.
Plan of action
According to sources, based on instructions by the higher officials, the Bescom is now preparing an action plan and has already served notices to a number of departments.
“Our officials are also publishing newspaper advertisements and coordinating with every department. We have now served notices to many of them, asking them to pay up the dues in seven days,” the official said.
Instructions have been passed to disconnect the power supply in case the agencies do not respond to the notice.