Friday, 27 August 2021 | PNS | Dehradun
Sending faulty electricity bills to over 65,000 consumers across the State is not an error but a political disaster committed by the Uttarakhand government. It was an attempt by the State government to forcibly take money from the public by sending faulty bills without any readings and putting pressure on them through the officials of the department concerned. The chief ministerial candidate of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Ajay Kothiyal stated this during a Press conference here on Thursday.
Kothiyal said that consumers had been telling the government for a long time that faulty bills were being sent to them but the officials concerned continued to put pressure on consumers for the payment of such bills. He said, “There are several cases where the department has sent faulty bills amounting from Rs 10,000 to Rs 20 crore across the state. The department has sent an electricity bill of Rs five lakh for a cowshed to a farmer in Roorkee. In another case, the department sent a monthly electricity bill of Rs 20 crore to a shopkeeper in Rishikesh. There are thousands of such cases that show the failure of governance by the government and the department of the state government.” He stated, “The government has itself admitted during the assembly session that faulty bills had been sent to more than 65,000 consumers without taking any readings.
Since the issue has become big, the government here just imposed a fine of Rs 18,77,000 on the agency which was responsible for taking the readings. The number of faulty bills is evidently way more than the numbers mentioned by the government, possibly in lakhs, but nobody from the authorities tried to do anything on this issue when poor consumers were complaining about such bills,” stated Kothiyal. He said that AAP will cancel all such faulty bills after winning the state assembly elections next year.
Meanwhile, he also said that the government here has targeted AAP by arresting the men who installed posters of the party in Dehradun. “It has happened for the first time when someone was arrested for installing posters and hoardings of a political party. I was featured in those posters and if the government wants to punish somebody then it should send me to jail. I will not even take bail after being arrested,” stated Kothiyal.
