Now, pay power bill exceeding Rs 50,000 online

Kuldip Bhatia

Ludhiana, June 9

Come July and all consumers will have to pay their monthly electricity bills, above Rs50,000, through digital mode.

The Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) will not accept payment through cheques, bank draft or any mode other than net banking, RTGS or NEFT after June 30, 2019.

Directions in this respect have already been issued by the zonal heads (chief engineers) to divisional or sub-divisional offices to apprise consumers through bulk messages (SMS) in addition to putting stamps on all energy bills issued after May 2019 with the message — “Payment exceeding Rs50,000 shall be accepted in digital mode only from July 1, 2019 onwards.”

With reference to a memo (No. 795/80/DD/SR-75 dated February 28, 2019) issued by the PSPCL Chief Engineer/Commercial, the field staff of the PSPCL has been intimated that as per the provisions of the Supply Code-2014 (5th Amendment) deposit of electricity bills exceeding Rs50,000 in a billing cycle/month has been made mandatory through any digital mode such as e-banking, credit or debit card, RTGS, NEFT or any other approved digital mode with effect from July 1, 2019.

A PSPCL official confirmed that messages have already been sent to all small power (SP), medium supply (MS), large supply (LS) and bulk supply (BS) as well as domestic supply (DS) consumers and non-residential supply (NRS) with sanctioned load of 20 kW/20 kVA to make them aware about the mandatory digital payment of electricity bills exceeding Rs50,000 from July 2019.

The move for mandatory digital payment of bills (for more than Rs50,000), however, has not gone down well with the industry, particularly the micro and small units, for the simple reason that a miniscule percentage of them had access to net-banking, phone banking or credit/debit cards to make payment through digital mode.

“A majority of the small scale industrialists, small traders and business owners still go for traditional ways of banking and with little working knowledge of computers, they will have to face many problems for making digital payments,” said Badish Jindal, president, Federation of Punjab Small Industries Associations.

He said most of the consumers, including those from the industry, would prefer to make payments through cheques, which is more convenient rather than the cumbersome procedures of net-banking or else RTGS/NEFT, for which additional bank charges have to be incurred and most consumers would need to make rounds of the banks for making digital payments.