New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday approved a policy proposal asking Discoms to pay a compensation rate of Rs 50 per hour of power cut to users plagued by severe outages in the Capital. The move, a Delhi Government statement said, has been put in place to ensure Discoms become more accountable.

The compensation amount will be credited to the consumer automatically by the concerned distribution company and be adjusted in the electricity bill. However, the move is not out of the woods yet, as it has been sent to the Lieutenant Governor for his assent.

The National Capital became the first in India to draw up a ‘Power Consumer Compensation Policy’.

In the first of its kind pro-power consumer policy in the country, Kejriwal on Tuesday approved the power department’s policy for compensating consumers for unscheduled power cuts by the private power distribution companies in Delhi.

The Delhi government has sent this major policy proposal for final approval to LG Anil Baijal, which is set to make the Discoms accountable to the consumers.

According to this new policy, in the case of an unscheduled power cut, the power companies will have to restore the electricity within an hour and failure to do so shall invite a penalty of Rs 50 per hour per consumer for the first two hours of power cut followed by Rs 100 per hour per consumer after two hours.

The exemption of an initial one hour from the penalty will be granted to the Discoms only once in a day and in case of recurrence of failure of supply for the same consumer on same day, the penalty shall accrue right from the beginning of the duration of the unscheduled power cut.

If an individual customer, instead of an entire cluster, is affected then he or she can file a “No Current” complaint through SMS, email, phone or online. The Discom will then attend to the complaint and will send a confirmation message to the consumer with restoration date and time.

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.

“The government is of the clear view that power distribution privatisation in Delhi, which was done around 15 years back, should benefit the consumers and uninterrupted power supply for which they pay, is their right. The Delhi government is confident that the honourable 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 Delhi government spokesperson said.

If the compensation is not credited automatically by the concerned Discom, the consumer can approach Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) or Consumer Grievance Redressal Forum (CGRF) for its resolution and the amount of compensation in such cases shall be Rs 5,000.

If a group of consumers is affected by an unscheduled power cut, the Discoms shall identify all such affected consumers from their own records and compensation shall be credited to each consumer’s Consumer Account (CA) number.