Five months on, only 12% Gurugram societies opted for unified billing system

GURUGRAM: DHBVN’s unified billing system for single-point connections to keep a check on
overcharging for electricity in the city has few takers, five months after its launch. Of the 301
single-point connections in Gurgaon, only 36 group housing societies have integrated their
meters with the new system.
DHBVN rolled out the unified billing system in September last year after receiving repeated
complaints from residents that bills raised by the builder or RWAs are not following the standard
tariff of DHBVN, as a result of which they aren’t able to get the benefit of differential slab tariff.
The unified billing system was to ensure that the end user pays a separate bill for actual power
consumption as per the stipulated tariff, preventing the developer or RWA from overcharging
residents for electricity in the name of power backup and common area maintenance.
According to a senior DHBVN official, societies are still reluctant to adopt the new system as
they have to maintain separate meters for common services, such as the common area, sewage
treatment plants and streetlights, and overhaul their existing electricity infrastructure. In case of
diesel generator backup supply, societies need to charge the residents separately or through
dual register meters. So, they are unwilling to switch to the new system even though it is
beneficial for end users, the official said.
“As of now, the new billing system has not been made mandatory. Societies are still reluctant to
integrate into the new system as they have to recalibrate their billing system and meters, share
data of their consumers with DHBVN and ensure bills are generated as per the approved
format. Moreover, there are some electrical infrastructure costs involved. We are trying to
address their concerns and are encouraging them to switch to the new system as it eliminates
overcharging,” said PK Chauhan, DHBVN superintending engineer, circle-2.
Meanwhile, some societies that have switched to the new billing system pointed out that it has
some software glitches, leaving them with no choice but to rely on the old mechanism for issuing
bills.
“The new billing software introduced by DHBVN is not user-friendly. There are a lot of errors and
issues have been identified while billing, including wrong tariff slab selection, GST details not
showing on the bill, and errors in calculation of the common area electricity consumption,” said
Sanjay Satyabrat, president of Malibu Towne condominium RWA.
“We haven’t benefited much after adopting the new system. Rather, it has increased our
workload as we have to update data every month to generate the bills as per the prescribed
format,” said RS Redhu, president of NBCC Heights RWA.