Farmers get rid of smart meters, fearing pre-paid power supply

Parvesh Sharma

Sangrur, August 30

The installation of smart electricity meters has become a big headache for the PSPCL as farmers are immediately removing and depositing these at power corporation offices. They believe that the smart meters will be later converted into pre-paid devices and they will have to pay higher bills than now.

The protesting farmers have been repeatedly gheraoing officials to express resentment against the move.

“The PSPCL will replace all meters with pre-paid electricity meters and smart meters have a feature that they can be converted into pre-paid devices at any time,” said Harjinder Singh, secretary, BKU (Ugrahan), Lehra block.

Farm leaders said they had removed and deposited back around 150 smart meters from the Lehra block alone during the past one year.

Harjinder added that many farmers have alleged that they were receiving higher amounts of bills through smart meters “as it charges more than an electronic meter”.

Lehal Khurd residents on August 25 gheraoed officials who had gone to check power theft and install smart meters. Later, on August 28, some farmers removed three smart meters from Lehal Khurd and deposited them in the PSPCL office at Lehragaga.

“We have to install smart meters. The pre-paid meters will be installed only on government premises. We have been conducting meetings with farmers and sharing these facts,” said RK Mittal, Superintendent Engineer, PSPCL, Sangrur.