Few takers for UPPCL’s one-time settlement scheme

Lucknow: The UP Power Corporation Ltd’s (UPPCL) one-time settlement scheme to recover ₹27,000 crore electricity dues failed to evoke the ‘desired’ response from defaulters who chose not to clear their pending electricity bills in anticipation that the next government would waive off arrears and provide free power, people aware of the issue revealed.

“As all political parties are promising free power and waiver of arrears to voters, most of the defaulters apparently ignored our OTS because they were convinced that any government that came to power after the assembly polls in March would waive off their dues,” a top UPPCL official said.

UPPCL, in October, 2021, announced the OTS seeking to waive off 100% surcharge (interest) payable on electricity dues, provided consumers cleared all their arrears. The scheme that was applicable to farmers, domestic and commercial consumers was to be in effect between October 21 and November 30.

The scheme, was however, extended at least thrice before it finally came to an end on January 31 after the corporation made a lot of publicity to encourage defaulters to opt for the OTS.

“Despite all our efforts, we could recover only ₹2,500 crore from consumers and this is too low, given the fact that we have a whopping ₹27,000 crore arrears pending against non-government consumers alone,” the official said. “The last OTS brought around ₹8,000 crore to the corporation’s exchequer,” he pointed out.

It is revealed that arrears to the tune of ₹6,000 crore are collectively pending against more than 1.50 lakh consumers and individually each of them owes more than ₹1 lakh to the corporation.

Another senior UPPCL official said that not only did the free power and dues waiver promises being made by political parties adversely impact the OTS but the corporation’s inability to carry out raids and snap connections due to the polls was also a major reason for the failure of the OTS.

“OTS gives desired results only when defaulters have the fear of their power supply being snapped if they do not pay bills. But the consumers this time knew the government-owned corporation could not afford to launch a disconnection drive till elections were over in March, after which they believed the new government would waive off dues and start providing free power as being promised to them,” he said.