Delhi residents may soon get paid for unscheduled power cuts per hour

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday approved a policy to compensate consumers for unscheduled power cuts by electricity discoms in the national capital.

The discoms have to pay a penalty of Rs 100 for each hour of such a power outage.'

The policy will come into effect after the approval of Lt Governor (L-G) Anil Baijal, said a Delhi government statement.

"In a first of its kind pro-power consumer policy in the country, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today approved the power department's policy for compensating consumers for unscheduled power cuts by private power distribution companies in Delhi," the statement said.

The government hopes that the policy will be approved by the L-G.

In 2016, Kejriwal had alleged that an order of his government to compensate power consumers for unscheduled electricity cuts was cancelled by the then L-G, Najeeb Jung.

The latest policy has been sent to Baijal for final approval, the statement said.

"The Delhi government is confident that the L-G will concur with the policy and will endorse this pro-consumer step, which will become a model for other governments in the country," it said.

Under the policy, discoms will be exempted 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.

There are three private power discoms including the BSES companies BYPL and BRPL, and the Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited (TPDDL) that supply power to the city, barring areas under the New Delhi Municipal Council and the Delhi Cantonment.

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 Rs 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.