LG Anil Baijal has approved the AAP government’s proposal mandating compensation to consumers for unscheduled power cuts.

LG Anil Baijal has approved the AAP government’s proposal mandating compensation to consumers for unscheduled power cuts. The proposal was cleared by CM Arvind Kejriwal a few days ago. On Thursday, Baijal tweeted: “Approved proposal for issue of policy directions regarding payment of compensation to consumers in case of power failure.” Reacting to the development, Kejriwal stated in a tweet: “This is a revolutionary and a very innovative policy of Delhi govt which will make discoms directly accountable to people (sic).”
In case of an unscheduled cut, discoms will have to restore power within an hour. Failure to do so will result in a penalty of Rs 50 per hour per consumer for the first two hours, followed by Rs 100 per hour per consumer after two hours. “The exemption of initial one hour from the penalty will be granted to discoms only once a day and, in case of recurrence of failure of supply for the same consumer on the same day, the penalty will accrue right from the beginning of the duration of the unscheduled power cut,” the government has stated.

In case of an individual consumer being affected, the consumer will be required to file a “no current” complaint through SMS, e-mail, phone, app or website. The discom will then attend to the complaint and send a confirmation message to the consumer with the restoration date and time. Whenever the permissible time limit is over, the respective compensation amount will be credited to the CA number automatically without any manual intervention and a message will be sent to the consumer. The adjustment of the penalty amount will be made in the consumer’s monthly electricity bill.
“If the compensation is not credited automatically by the discom, the consumer can approach DERC/CGRF for its resolution and the amount of compensation in such cases will be Rs 5,000, or five times the compensation payable, whichever is higher,” an official has said.