MSEDCL urges consumers to pay dues ahead of festive season

Pune: The MSEDCL has urged consumers to clear pending dues ahead of the festive season, while asserting action would continue against defaulters.Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL) has launched a drive to recover outstanding dues amounting to Rs319.5 crore within the Pune circle and has disconnected supply to 7,122 consumers over the last fortnight.The power utility has set a zero-arrears target for the end of March, saying it would not hesitate to disconnect supply to defaulters and has formed division-wise teams to accelerate action.Among the categories, domestic consumers have the highest defaulters at 4 lakh with Rs75 crore as the collective amount due. The pending amount is Rs31.5 crore for around 65,408 commercial consumers, Rs18.4 crore for 10,099 industrial consumers, Rs96.1 crore for 4,610 street-light consumers, Rs87.5 crore for 1,858 public water supply consumers, while 5,321 consumers under the public services category owe Rs11.1 crore.MSEDCL said some defaulting consumers created a ruckus with officials recently. A branch engineer conducting a meter inspection during a recovery drive was verbally abused and threatened by a customer. In a separate incident, a senior technician out for bill recovery in Kondhwa was also verbally abused and threatened by a person present at the location. Police complaints have been filed in both cases.Chief engineer of Pune circle Sunil Kakade said, "Customers are requested to cooperate with the MSEDCL by promptly clearing their current electricity bills and any outstanding arrears. They should take steps to avoid situations that may lead to the disconnection of their electricity supply.".