‘Recover dues over Rs 1,000 crore’

Brihanmumbai Electric Supply & Transport (BEST) committee members have asked that a special “Recovery Cell” be created to recover unpaid electricity dues to the tune of more than Rs 1,000 crore in the past decade.

According to data available up to 2013, the city of Mumbai owes an amount of Rs 1,067.11 crore to the undertaking’s power supply wing. Hence, committee members like Akash Purohit said it is high time that BEST designate a special cell to follow up on consumers in the island city who have not paid up their power charges.

“We need a cell for the kind of persistence needed to recover the money owed to us. We need to keep going to the consumers and demanding that they pay unpaid bills,” said Mr Purohit.

Committee member Kedar Hombalkar asked the management whether criminal charges can be brought against consumers who have not paid their electricity bills for over a decade.

“Some of the bills are as high as Rs 10 to Rs 12 lakh. I would like the undertaking to look into legal avenues of pressing criminal charges against these consumers who have cheated BEST out of their revenue,” said Mr Hombalkar.

Surprisingly, committee member Suhas Samant launched a scathing attack on the undertaking and said that corruption within the BEST has caused nearly 2,000 meters to show only 0 to 10 units.

“These meters have been rigged and these 2,000 homes have been paying the minimum amount. In fact, the office of Additional commissioner of police had not paid bills from 1993 to 2013. This is testimony to the fact that some BEST officials are looking the other way while this goes on,” said Mr Samant.

A BEST official said that there can be 2,000 such meters but 70 per cent of them are unoccupied residents and the remaining cases are of power theft or defective meters.

“It cannot be a case, where BEST officials are helping consumers cheat about their meters, but the case is such that 70 per cent of these 2,000 meters are in homes where residents do not occupy them anymore. The remaining cases are of power theft mostly found in slums and defective meters as well,” said the official.

The committee members’ demand for a “Recovery Cell” comes on the back of BEST asking BMC for a loan of Rs 250 crore owing to falling profit margins.