NEW DELHI: LG Anil Baijal ’s nod permitting, discoms will soon have to compensate you for unscheduled power cuts, failing which they may be fined up to Rs 5,000. Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday approved the power department’s policy to this effect. The file has now gone to the LG office for final approval.

A government spokesperson said the privatisation of power distribution — which happened around 15 years ago — must benefit consumers and an uninterrupted power supply, for which they paid, was their right. “The Delhi government is confident that LG will concur with the policy and will endorse this pro-consumer step, which will become a model for other governments across the country to follow,” a statement from the CM’s office said.

According to the policy, in case of an unscheduled cut, discoms will have to restore power within an hour. Failure to do so will result in a penalty of Rs 50 per hour per consumer for the first two hours, followed by Rs 100 per hour per consumer after two hours. “The exemption of initial one hour from the penalty will be granted to discoms only once a day and, in case of recurrence of failure of supply for the same consumer on the same day, the penalty will accrue right from the beginning of the duration of the unscheduled power cut ,” the government stated.

In case of an individual consumer being affected, the consumer will be required to file a “no current” complaint through SMS, e-mail, phone, app or website and their particulars, such as name, consumer account number, mobile number, etc., will be captured at the time of the complaint registration. The discom will then attend to the complaint and send a confirmation message to the consumer with the restoration date and time. Whenever the permissible time limit is over, the respective compensation amount will be credited to the CA number automatically without any manual intervention and a message will be sent to the consumer. The adjustment of the penalty amount will be made in the consumer’s monthly electricity bill.

“If the compensation is not credited automatically by the discom, the consumer can approach DERC/CGRF for its resolution and the amount of compensation in such cases will be Rs 5,000, or five times the compensation payable, whichever is higher. If a group of consumers is affected by the unscheduled power cut, the discom will identify all such affected consumers from their own records and the compensation will be credited to each of such consumer’s CA number as per the time schedule of compensation,” an official said.

