The Hindu : New Delhi News : Power to 60 schools disconnected

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 06, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Power to 60 schools disconnected

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, JULY 5. The failure of the Delhi Government's Directorate of Education to clear its electricity bills of Rs. 2 crores despite repeated reminders has led to disconnection of power connections to nearly 60 government schools resulting in untold suffering and inconvenience to hundreds of students and teachers.

North Delhi Power Limited (NDPL), the discom responsible for distribution of power in North and North-West Delhi, was forced to take such a drastic step after no response was received to their pleas to deposit the electricity bills. The discom, which launched he drive on June 29, has further threatened to disconnect power to another 140 schools if the pending bills were not cleared at the earliest.

What is even worse is that all efforts by the top officials of NDPL including the chief executive officer, Anil Sardana, to invite the attention of the Director (Education), Rajinder Kumar, to this serious situation proved fruitless. It is learnt that for the past almost three months, the NDPL officials had tried to get in touch with Mr. Kumar to bring to his notice the serious situation emerging out of non-payment of bills

There was also an attempt to get in touch with the Principal Secretary (Education) but without any success. It is understood that senior NDPL officials tried to get in touch with Mr. Kumar for almost three months but there was no response from his side. In fact, it is learnt that Mr. Sardana personally wrote letters to Mr. Kumar but failed to get any positive response from him. Even efforts to invite the attention of the Education Minister, Arvinder Singh Lovely, failed to get any response on this issue. The NDPL officials also met the school authorities a few days before taking action.

Having exhausted all avenues of getting the Directorate of Education to make payment of the electricity bills, the NDPL had to undertake this drastic action of disconnecting power to nearly 60 schools in rural Delhi.

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