NEW DELHI: There is little respite for the Sheila Dikshit Government and the private power distribution companies from people's power.

After having successfully fought a battle for rollback of the 10 per cent increase in power tariffs, the newly- constituted forum of the United Residents' Welfare Joint Association -- URJA -- will kick off its protest campaign against fast-running meters and inflated bills with a public meeting at Old Rajendra Nagar on Sunday.

The convenor of the campaign against the power tariff hike, Promod Chawla, said the Delhi Government was not at all serious about the issue of fast meters and inflated bills which was the real bone of contention. "The Government is trying to buy time to settle internal politics and taking the consumers for a ride,'' he said.

Cruel joke

Calling upon residents to boycott the order of the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) for testing two meters per colony, the New Rajendra Nagar RWA president, D.M. Narang, said it was a cruel joke and not even worth commenting on. The Greater Kailash RWA has already raised a demand for replacing the current fast-running meters with a verified meter that is acceptable to the committee proposed to the Power Minister earlier by People's Action.

The Lado Sarai RWA also said that the new meters do not reflect their average consumption by any scale.

Average charges

The Old Rajendra Nagar RWA general secretary, S.P. Gupta, said he had prepared a draft of questions that would be put before the public meeting on Sunday. "Why should the consumer pay the current charges which are way beyond logical consumption? Residents should pay only average charges until it is proved that the electronic meters installed by the private distribution companies are fine,'' he added.

Poor response

Warning against any kind of laxity on the issue as had happened during the recent power hike crisis, People's Action president, Sanjay Kaul, castigated the poor response of the Delhi Government and said once again the same players who created the previous crisis were inching towards a similar situation.

The People's Action on Friday also wrote to the heads of the three discoms seeking Lok Sabha constituency-wise detail of percentage of power thefts.

MPs' role

The discoms have been asked to furnish the details of such thefts with a view to establish responsibility of elected representatives towards this issue.

"It is useless to ask the police to stop theft when there is no political will to actually rein in theft.

This information would allow us to have a clearer picture of what each MP is doing to stop theft in his constituency so that the theft burden is reduced and people of Delhi can get an immediate rebate in the astronomical rates that they are having to pay currently,'' he added.

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