Residents of Ardee City have demanded that the Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN) take over operation and maintenance of power supply at the earliest, to ensure smooth power supply.
Residents said that, at present, they face a five-six hour outage every day.
In April, Ardee City had entered into an agreement with DHBVN for direct power connections. As per the agreement, each household has to pay Rs 26,000 to the discom to provide them direct power connections. The DHBVN, in a circular to the residents on July 30, had asked them to apply for new connections by August 5.
Chaitali Mandhotra, a resident, said, “The power situation is bad. Long outages and low voltage have been a big problem for years. We want the DHBVN to take over maintenance and operation of electricity supply at the earliest.”
Currently, the DHBVN has provided a bulk (single point) connections to the developer, who further supplies electricity to the 2,600 households.
As a substation is also to be set up, residents had agreed to pay the discom. So far, the DHBVN has installed meters for 1,800 households of the 2,100 that have filed applications.
The DHBVN has requested the resident welfare association (RWA) of the colony to ensure that the remaining people apply for a connection at the earliest.
Praveen Yadav, the president of RWA, said, “The DHBVN has not fixed a deadline, but has appealed to us to complete the procedure.”
However, some residents are still reluctant to apply for individual connections.
RK Gupta, former RWA president, said, “Why should I pay Rs 26,000 to the DHBVN? We already have developer-installed meters and the DHBVN must not charge us for new installations. We paid a large amount to the developer for electricity connections 15 years ago. I refuse to pay the DHBVN and want it to install a new meter free of cost.”
KC Aggarwal, superintending engineer, DHBVN, said, “We have not fixed a deadline, but are soon to take a decision in this regard. In case 2,600 people do not apply, we will consider their connections illegal. Once, we take over maintenance, the bulk connection system will be nullified.”
A similar situation prevails in South City-2.
Neeraj Yadav, a resident of South City-2, said, “On average, we face five-hour cuts every day due to inadequate infrastructure in the colony. We want the DHBVN to take over maintenance to improve supply.”
First Published: Aug 21, 2018 13:50 IST
