Power theft in 29 cities of Uttarakhand is taking a toll on UPCL. This time, in the petition filed by UPCL in the Regulatory Commission, the line loss and aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) loss of these cities have also been clearly clarified. Among these, many cities of the plain districts Haridwar and Udham Singh Nagar are on top in power theft. In the efforts to curb power theft, assault on UPCL team has become a common thing. In the last one year, there have been about 15 such incidents across the state, in which teams that went to catch power theft have been attacked. Despite so much risk, UPCL is not able to stop power theft in 29 cities. The latest figures show that there are some cities in the plain districts, where the line loss due to power theft is more than 80 percent. According to experts, if we consider line loss as a technical loss, then it should be maximum 8 to 9 percent, but here the loss is 10 times more than this.
Lagging behind in paying electricity bills
The situation of electricity bill recovery in these cities looks even more worrying. Only in Bajpur, Dehradun, Haridwar, Jaspur, Kashipur, Khatima, Kotdwar, Mussoorie, Pauri, Pithoragarh, Ranikhet, Rishikesh, Tanakpur and Vikasnagar, the revenue recovery is 100 percent. In the rest of the cities, the figure is between 85 to 95. The figures are also very low in terms of bill payment. UPCL has reported 47 percent billing efficiency in Khatima, 48 percent in Joshimath, 78-78 percent in Gadarpur and Gopeshwar.
