The ruling Aam Aadmi Party on Thursday announced that the people of Delhi will be compensated for unscheduled power cuts, a plan that had been in talks for months.
Following this, the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission revised its rules today.
As per the policy, the consumers will get a compensation of Rs 50 per hour for the first two hours which will go up to Rs 100 for every subsequent hour in case of unscheduled power cuts.
With this, Delhi has become the first state in the country to have a policy to compensate consumers for unscheduled outages.
Lt Governor Anil Baijal had earlier in April, approved the Kejriwal government’s proposal to compensate the consumers.
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 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.
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.
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.