16 cr penalty collected for power pilferage

Vijayawada: The vigilance wing of the Southern Power Distribution Company Limited (SPDCL) booked 26,500 cases against consumers for various offences like pilferage of power, overload and collected Rs 16 crore penalty from April to November, 2016, said V Ravi, superintending engineer of the vigilance wing of the SPDCL here on Tuesday.

Ravi, along with P Manohara Rao, additional superintendent of police (ASP) of vigilance wing (Tirupati), talking to newsmen said the vigilance teams conducted raids and booked 26,500 cases in eight districts under the limits of SPDCL. He further stated that the raids would continue as usual. He said during the last year 22,800 cases were booked and penalty of Rs 13 crore collected from offenders.

Disclosing details of this year raids, he said Kadapa district topped the pilferage and malpractice cases with nearly 5000 cases. He said power pilferage is very high in Kadapa, Anantapur and Kurnool districts compared to other districts. He said eight districts Krishna, Guntur, Prakasam, Nellore, Chittoor, Kadapa, Kurnool and Anantapur come under SPDCL.

He said some people directly tap the power without installing the metres and some others resort to malpractice by using the power for commercial purpose instead of domestic purpose.

He said overloading of power is also offence because the local transformers will be destroyed due to over burden if the consumers use excess load than the permitted by energy department.