Thanekars anxiously wait for online hearing of inflated electricity bill issue on Sep 11

KYT Team

A hearing will be held on September 11 on the issue of increased electricity bills sent to consumers after the lockdown was announced. The petitioners have also sought an interim order from MSEDCL to stop recovery of payment.

During the lockdown, all power distribution companies, including MSEDCL, had sent average bills to customers of Thane. In it, other power distribution companies except MSEDCL deducted the average paid unit during the lockdown. MSEDCL, however, deducted the amount paid instead of the unit and paid according to the last reading in March and the reading in June. This resulted in huge bills of thousands of rupees to the customers in Thane. Customer payments have increased by thousands of rupees due to non-deduction of units. Former MP Kirit Somaiya opposed this and MLC Niranjan Davkhare had filed a petition in the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission. It will now be heard.

The commission has called for an online hearing on September 11. Customers with less than 100 units of average power consumption in the last six months should be given 100 per cent discount on electricity payments in lockdown, while customers with 101 to 300 units should be given 50 per cent discount. The original petition also sought a review of the payments of customers whose power consumption had increased by more than 25 per cent before the lockdown. This is why this hearing is considered important.