Gurugram residents raise electricity-related issues with Haryana power minister

GURUGRAM: At a meeting with Haryana power minister Ranjit Singh Chautala on Monday, residents of the city aired their grievances on various electricity-related issues, including inflated bills due to defective smart meters, irregular billing, poor power infrastructure and lack of its upkeep, and poor consumer redress mechanism.

Jaimini Vandana, RWA president of South City-1, said, “Our colony has not been taken over by power discom DHBVN to date, despite being taken over by MCG in 2019. Our electricity infrastructure is 25 years old and completely rotten, every other month we have to pool in money to repair panels, transformers, cable lines which ideally should be maintained by the electricity department.”

Many have raised the issue of irregular meter reading by the DHBVN officials and inflated bills due to defective smart meters. “There are 1,136 flats in our society but we are still getting electricity supply in the commercial category resulting in higher tariff charges on the residents and frequent power cuts. This is despite our builder having applied for the bulk domestic supply connection in 2019,” said Satvir Singh, RWA president of Apex Our Homes in Sector 37C.

The power minister assured the residents that in the next three months, “people will see the change in the electricity infrastructure in the city”. “We are working on war footing and we are making all efforts to resolve citizen problems related to electricity.”

Residents raised the issue of ACD charges and demanded to put it on a hold this year. Dinesh Vashisht, RWA president of sectors 3, 5 and 6 said, “People are still struggling with pandemic effects and many have not even recovered yet.”

PK Das, additional chief secretary (power) , told TOI, “We are sending the proposal to HERC to allow ACD of one billing cycle to be collected in four instalments.”