Mumbaikar's temper rise on the back of surging bills

It's winter, and the temperature as well as the public temper seem to be high because electricity bills are burning a hole in the Mumbaikar's pocket.

The problem has mainly been reported from the western and eastern suburbs where power is supplied by Adani Electricity Mumbai Limited (AEML) and Tata Power (TPC). The issue is bigger for AEML, which has a larger consumer base.

Many families claim that earlier, despite their appliances being used to the utmost, their electricity bill wouldn't cross Rs 2,000 a month even during summer.

The Khatri family from Borivali say their bills for the last two months have doubled. For the months of September and October, they received bills from AEML totaling over Rs 9,000.

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Rupal Khatri said, "When I made complaints, I was told by the customer care centre that our voltage consumption might have exceeded due to an old refrigerator or AC or something. Then they said that light might have been used excessively in October, or we might be having a defunct electric meter."

"Since the takeover by AEML, bills are higher. So I switched," said Khatri. Since the new tariff from September 1, the average hike is mere 0.24 per cent.

AEML officials claim that people slipped into higher tariff slabs with increase in power consumption. This means that until one is consuming up to 300 units, they pay at a rate of Rs 7.65 per unit in case of AEML, and Rs 7.51 to TPC. But increase in even a unit leads to the per-unit cost rising to Rs 9.29 for AEML and Rs 11.49 for TPC.

"In last week of August, the staff that reads meters went on a five-day strike. So we were forced to take average billing for three months. Plus, the new tariff schedule came in place. The hike in place is as per the orders of MERC," said an AEML official. "We expect the situation to normalise in January billing cycle."

The AEML management also blames its consumer mix as over 16 lakh of the total 29 lakh consumers are in the 0-300 units bracket. These are the ones who are charged less than the cost of supply. Sources claim over 75 per cent of AEML are residential consumers who are facing the brunt of tariff hike.

Changing over

Sources said that close to 4 lakh consumers have gone to TPC from AEML over several months. In the last two month since new tariff came in, close to 3,000 consumers have migrated to TPC. But power experts claim that consumers could pay more after migrating to TPC as changeover tariff is higher on some slabs.

Till one's consumption is under 300 units, changeover to TPC will be beneficial. Beyond that, the difference is higher for TPC by Rs 1.24 per unit for those consuming 301-500 units and Rs 2.01 per unit if over 500 units is consumed.

"I migrated to TPC but found that changeover cost is higher with rise in slabs of units consumed. Moreover we are paying additional charges towards surcharges paid to AEML. The government should withdraw duties levied on bills," said S Ohri, resident of Kandivali. In November, Ohri paid a bill of over Rs 6,100 to TPC after he consumed above 550 units.

On December 4, MERC sent a notice to AEML asking for an explanation over the hue and cry by the public.