The Hindu : National : Maharashtra Government drive to curb theft of electricity

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Thursday, Jun 21, 2007
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Maharashtra Government drive to curb theft of electricity

Special Correspondent

MUMBAI: Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s stamping ground Latur is under the lens for its power losses which, at 60 per cent, are among the highest in the State. For the past 25 days, teams of officials have spread out to Latur and Aurangabad to detect illegal connections and penalise the guilty.

The action comes in the wake of the Prime Minister’s exhortation to all States to weed out the “cancer “of power thefts.

At a press conference here on Wednesday, Ajay Bhushan Pandey, managing director of the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited or Mahavitaran, said the utility was preparing a proposal to have a permanent contingent of police force to escort its teams during their work of detecting and disconnecting illegal supply.

Carrot and stick approach

A scheme of incentives formulated by Mahavitaran was approved by the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC). The utility could now monitor performance upto the sub-divisional level and if it was better than the benchmark, cash incentives could be given, Dr Pandey said. By way of disincentives, employees’ salary could be cut in areas where power losses were not being checked.

There was also a proposal to photograph meter readings — an outsourced project — all over the State to check meter tampering. After a pilot project was carried out in Nashik, Mahavitaran’s revenues there went up by 35-40 per cent. Dr. Pandey said mass theft called for mass action. For the past fortnight, the utility had identified areas with the highest losses and sent teams of officials to dismantle complicated systems of wires and meters, which were illegal. The Marathwada region reported the highest power losses in Parbhani, Beed, Osmanabad, Nanded and Latur.

The distribution losses in the State were 29.98 per cent, down from 32 per cent last year. The MERC set a target of reducing it by another four per cent this year.

The utility would focus on areas with high losses and once the illegal connections were cut, officials would go back there within seven days in follow-up action. In the past, action against power theft was sporadic and illegal connections were restored soon. To curb this tendency, follow-up visits were a must, Dr. Pandey said. To be effective, the drive must be sustained for at least a month in theft-prone places. .

In Latur alone, 2,033 cases were detected and the loss of power amounted to Rs 1.08 crore.

The utility filed 434 cases and recovered Rs 32 lakh from the offenders. Till now, as part of the drive, 7,132 cases were detected all over the State, first information reports registered in 1,172 cases and Rs. 96 lakh was recovered.

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