No plea in 4 years under rules that protect power consumers' rights

Bengaluru: Bescom has not received any applications in the last four years under the Electricity (Rights of Consumers) Rules, 2020, which protect the rights of electricity consumers and empower them to claim compensation for delay and deficiency in services. 

While the Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC) framed the necessary guidelines and rules, it was the responsibility of the electricity supply companies to create awareness among people. 

“We held public consultations and laid out clearly the standards of performance to be followed by Escoms. There are many conditions laid out and the compensation that can be claimed has also been fixed under close to 17 categories,” a senior KERC official explained. 

The rules allow consumers to claim compensation for violating standards of performance under many categories like number of interruptions in supply beyond set limit; time taken for connection, disconnection, reconnection, shifting; time taken for change in consumer category, load; time taken to resolve billing issues, and time taken to resolve voltage related issues. 

Consumer rights activists say except for newspaper notifications, Bescom has taken hardly any measure to spread the word.

“We conducted a survey of nearly 3,000 people in the state and it was clear that nearly 90% of them had no awareness about this. Escoms had to conduct awareness campaigns and release a booklet with detailed procedure to apply for compensation and the grounds on which it can be applied. However, no such effort has been made,” said Muralidharan Y G, consumer activist working in the area of electricity governance. 

He said Escoms also failed to introduce remote monitoring and compensation assessment systems. 

“The software has to be upgraded in such a way that delay in processing services should be remotely monitored and compensation automatically calculated. For instance, the system will record date on which an application for power connection was received. If the application has not been processed with the set number of days, the software should automatically award compensation. But none of these systemic changes have been made,” Muralidharan said.

While awareness among people is low, many Bescom officials themselves were clueless about these rules. 

“It is a specific guideline and only departments handling it may know,” one them said.