Haryana’s defaulting power users vanish

Bijendra Ahlawat 

Tribune News Service 

Faridabad, January 25

A private detective agency hired by the Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN) here has failed to yield any positive result. It has not been able to trace any defaulter mentioned in the department records. While power dues amounting to Rs 20 crore are reportedly pending, the contract of the agency expires on January 31.

The agency ‘Countrywide Detective Services’ was awarded the contract in December 2018. It was assigned the task of detecting defaulting consumers under the jurisdiction of the Faridabad operation circle.

The agency was to be paid at  Rs 350 per consumer (excluding applicable taxes) and the bills could be raised each fortnight. Officials of the power department had handed over the defaulters’ list to the agency that was told to start operations in the subdivision of Tilpat where the number of defaulters was 5,700. This subdivision is located in Old Faridabad and the majority of the colonies are unauthorised. “The agency has not been able to locate consumers who have been identified as defaulters in the official records for the past several years,” said an official. He said that these persons had either changed their place of residence or their earlier addresses had been replaced with new ones due to development of new colonies or merging of one colony with another.

The inability of the department to keep track of this floating population over the past several years has led to a wide gap in consumer information and hence, a rise in defaulters. Though the power supply to the majority of defaulters has already been disconnected, the department officials had come up with the idea of taking help of the private agency to locate the defaulters.

Admitting no progress on this front so far, PK Chauhan, SE, Faridabad, said that while the hiring of the detective agency was taken up on an experimental basis, the department was making all efforts to recover the pending bills.