Anil Baijal's nod to compensation for unscheduled power cuts

New Delhi: Delhiites will now be compensated for the unscheduled power cuts as lieutenant-governor Anil Bai-jal on Thursday approved the AAP government’s pr-oposal mandating an hourly compensation of Rs 100 to consumers in case of unscheduled power cuts. With the L-G’s appr-oval, Delhi will become the first city in the country to have a policy to compensate consumers for unscheduled outages.

The proposal to compensate consumers for unscheduled outages by power discoms in the national capital was approved by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal a few days ago and was sent for the L-G’s approval. “Appr-oved proposal for issue of policy directions regarding payment of compensation to consumers in case of power failure,” Mr Baijal tweeted.

As per the proposed policy, power discoms will have to pay their consumers for unscheduled power cuts, after first hour, at an hourly rate of Rs 100. Under the policy, discoms will be exempt from paying penalty in the first hour of an unscheduled power cut. For the next hour, consumers will be paid Rs 50, after which compensation will be paid at a rate of Rs 100 per hour.

The first hour exemption from penalty will be available once a day for the discoms.

The compensation earned by the consumers will be adjusted against their monthly power bill.

In case, the compensation is not paid by the discoms, the consumers can lodge a complaint with the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Authority (DERC). The amount of compensation in such cases will be '5,000 or five times of the compensation payable, whichever is higher, said the statement.

The affected consumers will be required to file a “no current” complaint through SMS, email, telephone, mobile apps or official websites of discoms, giving their particulars such as name, consumer account (CA) number, mobile number.

The discoms will attend to the complaint and will send a confirmation message to consumers with the date and time of restoration, the statement said.

It said that after the permissible time limit ends, the respective compensation amount will be automatically credited to the CA number without any manual intervention and a message will be sent to the consumer.