UHBVN imposes penalty of Rs 71.60 cr for power theft

Haryana power utility Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam today said it has imposed highest ever penalty of Rs 71.60 crore on erring consumers in the year 2012-13 as part of its ongoing campaign to curb power theft.
Out of which, an amount of Rs 38.90 crore has been recovered, UHBVN spokesman said here.
He said earlier, penalty of Rs 54.34 crore was imposed on the erring consumers in 2011-12 and Rs 25.99 crore were recovered.
The spokesman said the Nigam checked 1,73,374 consumer premises and detected 29,971 cases of pilferage of power during the year 2012-13.
The Nigam detected as many as 4,307 cases of theft of power in district Panipat followed by 4,272 in Karnal, 4051 in Sonepat, 3,789 in Jind, 3,574 in Rohtak, 2,620 in Kaithal, 2,306 in Kurukshetra, 1922 in Yamuna Nagar, 1438 in Jhajjar, 982 in Ambala and 710 in Panchkula.

He further said that in most of the cases, the erring consumers were found stealing power through direct connections, meter bye-pass, tampering the meter or by managing fake meter seals.