Not possible to establish the genuineness of some of the bills’

‘Meter reading data missing for 35 out of 50 sample bills’

A detailed investigation by a consultant appointed by the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission to study the inflated bills received by consumers in the BSES-served areas has substantiated that there has been a major “discrepancy” in the billing process for the months June to August this year.

The discrepancy resulted in BSES consumers getting hugely inflated bills.

In its report based on which the DERC has slapped BSES with a show-cause notice, consultant Standardisation, Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) has pointed out the discrepancy in the billing system and said it was not possible to establish the genuineness of the bills.

The investigation carried out on the basis of 50 bills that showed abnormal increase in monthly charges, revealed that the meter reading data (MDR) was “missing” for 35 of these.

The MRD does not mention the meter reading dates, the STQC report says. To elucidate its doubts about the authenticity of the billing system, the SQTC has cited a case where the date of bill generation reflected on the bill was August 27, 2009, whereas the bill shows the meter reading date as August 29, 2009.

The discom’s claims that the inflated bills generated were on account of higher demand for energy during June to August is also trounced by the report. “There was deviation in maximum demand value on meter as seen on physical inspection and as recorded in the Common Meter Reading Instrument (CMRI).” The CMRI is a hand-held computer used to download data from the electronic meters of consumers. “In the normal course data from meter is automatically read by CMRI and then it is transferred to the data base. However, in this case data from the meter was manually fed in CMRI instead of automatic transfer of data from meter to CMRI and such manually fed data was transferred from CMRI to the data base,” the report states.

Since the MDR was not available, the report claims that the data accuracy at different stages of the bill generation cannot be verified.

The report further indicates that the CMRI data was missing in most cases and the data transfer was done manually and there were several discrepancies in the software and its management.

The STQC has also complained that BSES did not cooperate with the investigations and did not provide several relevant documents. It was also denied uninterrupted online access of the billing software. The STQC also claimed the details provided by BSES had “missing information, overlapped bill dates and inconsistencies”.

Based on the STQC report, DERC has now asked the discom to file its reply by Thursday on why a suitable deduction should not be allowed to those consumers whose consumption for the months of June to August had shown an abnormal rise in comparison with the corresponding months in 2008.

Following a slew of complaints from consumers in the BSES areas about hugely inflated bills, the DERC had appointed STQC to investigate the billing system of the discom.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com