Discoms to be penalised, consumers compensated: Delhi govt.

New Delhi: Under fire over a spate of power outages across the city, with duration stretching up to five hours in many areas of south Delhi, the Delhi government on Saturday hit out at the discoms, who it said would be penalised and made to compensate consumers for unscheduled power cut. Stressing that the discoms, owned by Reliance Energy and TPDDL, will have to be held accountable, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal made it clear that they can't keep blaming "local faults" for the widespread blackouts afflicting the national capital. Power Minister Satyender Jain said Delhi was power surplus and was ready to handle load of up to 7,000 MW. He said outages stand at "0.19 per cent but even that is not acceptable". Kejriwal has called the discoms for a meeting on Tuesday. "We have directed the DERC that if any area has unscheduled power cuts and it is not rectified in two hours then people of that area has to be compensated. This policy will be implemented soon so that their accountability is fixed," Kejriwal said. Jain attributed the faults to lack of maintenance and inadequate investment to augment infrastructure on the part of the discoms. DERC has been given policy directions to penalise the distribution companies over power cuts and a notification in this regard will be out soon, he said. The extent of the power crisis in the city became clear through facts shared by Jain in a press conference. Complaints received by the discoms have been rising steadily, he said. "On May 14 BRPL (BSES Rajdhani Pvt Ltd) received 3,690 complaints and it went up to 5,067 on May 20. BYPL (BSES Yamuna Pvt Ltd) handled 2,613 complaints on May 14 which went up to 4,123 on May 20.  The corresponding figures for Tata Power were 856 and 1,241 respectively," Jain said. As the city battles an unrelenting heat wave, Delhi's peak power demand broke all previous records as it hit a staggering 6,188 MW yesterday. A day before it had breached the 6,000 MW mark for the first time.