Delhi government orders measures for discoms

As sizzling summer heat pushed mercury to 44.6 degrees Celsius and power demand to a record 6,361 Megawatt in Delhi on Monday, the city government asked the discoms to raise the number of call centre attendants and inform the citizens of any unscheduled outages through SMS.

Addressing a press conference, Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia announced a series of steps the discoms have been asked to take, which would give relief to the national capital's power consumers.

In a significant measure, Sisodia also talked of reviving an aborted clause in the Delhi Electricity Act which required discoms to pay compensation to the consumers for power-cuts exceeding two hours.

"The court had shot it down earlier, saying that we did not have approval of the Lt. Governor... I am meeting him (LG) tomorrow (Wednesday) and would talk to him about bringing it in practice," Sisodia said.

At 6,361 Megawatt (MW), the Education Minister acknowledged Monday saw the highest demand for power "in the entire history of the city".

However, with the capacity of producing 8,000 MW, Delhi has no shortage of power, Sisodia assured, and said the national capital is only second to Mumbai in terms of sustained supply of electricity.

"Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, after analysing the power demand situation of past few days, has given directions to his Chief Secretary to ask all three discoms to increase the number of seats in their call centres," Sisodia told the media here.

"All their phone numbers for complaints should be publicised diligently so that people get to know where to call in case of power failure," the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader said.

All such calls for the day need to be transcribed, analysed and reported to the Chief Minister every morning at 11 a.m., Sisodia said.

He also said any scheduled power-cuts should be displayed on the discoms' websites and in case of any unscheduled cut, the information has be to sent through SMS to the consumers.

He requested the discoms to mend the faults in the supply line if there is any and ensure a continuous supply.

--IANS

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