MUMBAI: Maharashtra BJP president Chandrakant Patil on Friday released a small unique booklet — which was a compilation of 100 ‘inflated’ electricity bills received from aggrieved consumers across the state.
The electricity bills have been compiled by former MP Kirit Somaiya, who said he had collected them from citizens in 30 cities across Maharashtra.
“We have bills which show that the inflated amount is 10 to 30 times the normal monthly bills. These bills have been shortlisted from hundreds of bills received from Nagpur, Aurangabad, Nashik, Sindhudurg, Kalyan, Vashi, Virar among other places,” he said at a press conference at state BJP headquarters on Friday.
Somaiya said that his own neighbour had got a hefty bill of Rs 66,000, which he dubbed as a ‘fraudulent bill’. “We will submit this booklet to state energy minister Nitin Raut and demand action against the errant officials once it is proved that the bills are wrongly calculated and inflated,” he said. A senior Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL) official said that these were baseless allegations and there was no error in any bill calculation. “Besides, we have been sending our meter readers to the site to get accurate readings,” the official said, adding that there were 106 Webinars and 124 camps conducted by the Bhandup division of MSEDCL to redress consumer grievances.
Among the demands by BJP is that for 2020-21, any increase in electricity tariff should be immediately scrapped. It is also demanding that all consumers whose average billing consumption for the past 6 months did not exceed 100 units should get a complete waiver of their electricity bills for the period of the lockdown months. “There should be a 50% subsidy for those consuming 101-300 units of power during lockdown,” Somaiya said. A few bills in the booklet included those of Thane consumer who got Rs 2,00 to Rs 3,000 average bills normally and got Rs 31,330 as bill for July; another customer from Dombivli who got Rs 31,030 bill, and a Badlapur consumer who got Rs 18,210 bill.
