Hats off to Shiela Dikshit for privatising DVB. Review on Delhi Vidyut Board

Attention citizens of Delhi

Unite in your fight for the privatisation of Delhi Vidyut Board which is one of the most corrupt organizations in the world. Please start signature campaigns and

public rallies in favour of privatization in your respective areas. The write up below will enlighten the people of Delhi more .

With great anguish I wish to state the harassment caused by the electric utility Delhi Vidyut Board. I kindly request you to take up the problem stated below as a Public Interest Litigation. Lately for the past five years it has become a ROGUE Department where a workforce of a few thousand is holding a City of One Crore to Ransom. Apart from a decrepit distribution system, corruption in the department has assumed gargantuan proportions. The unfortunate people who stay in the non- - NDMC (Lutyens part) area of Delhi have become a victim of the total inefficiency of DVB. I wish the rulers themselves travel incognito to a DVB office to get a bill rectified or a meter replaced and gauge the extent of corruption.

The following points raised have to carefully analyzed and studied to gauge the efficacy of this letter as a PIL.

1) The Rulers destined by privilege to stay in Lutyen’s Delhi, apart from having their areas free of slums and filth associated with other areas where lesser mortals live, have also ensured a good power distribution system by having it within the framework of NDMC and not DVB and this ensures that questions are not asked about the DVB being efficient in certain VIP areas. This point though strangely never debated in public forums smacks of ‘apartheid’ in its worst form. This is the entire irony of the situation.

2) That the state has been unable to ensure a good and reliable power supply and is

guilty of sitting and watching the gradual deterioration of the system, thus violating the Directive Principles of State Policy.

3) Making frequent and irresponsible statements of privatizing the distribution which

in turn only increases the resolve of the officials to ‘loot’ more before the management shifts to private hands.

4) People in general suffer silently. Though many are literate they suffer from a ‘socialist’ mindset which is a result of 40 years of socialism where many assume that the ‘State only’

provides some functions, and this aspect is fully exploited by vested interests.

5) That part of the fault lies with the people who do not declare their loads for consumption is partly true because, the general response I got from people was that they are apprehensive about enhancing their domestic loads as they fear the billing pattern which is focused on the sanctioned load and not on actual consumption whereby in the lean season from October to March when the airconditioners are not run, they are billed unfairly for lower consumption.

6) Despite the Govt.’s pronouncements about augmenting the distribution system and improving the Revenue collection by curbing power theft, which has reached alarming levels with unscrupulous households also being party to it by tampering with meters with the connivance of the staff, only about 50% of the power sold is being billed for the past six years thus leaving no surplus/money for modernization of the system, thus indicating a bleak future for the city of DELHI.

7) That Marxist West Bengal’s power distribution in Calcutta was privatized and the subsequent improvement in power distribution is testimony to the fact that drastic measures need to be taken when this situation reaches a point of no return.

8) Circumstantial evidence, pointing towards the use of sub standard equipment in the

distribution system.

9) Genuine innocent subscribers having their old/burnt meters replaced are being

given defective meters by DVB which are calibrated to record higher readings

so as to cover up for losses due to theft by unscrupulous households.

Thus, without advocating privatization of DVB, notices may be sent to the State Govt. on the above mentioned points and ask why an alternate distribution system managed by a reputed Industrial group like the TATA’s or Goenka’s, bids for which should be invited by a group of eminent citizens including top members of the judiciary, with infrastructure in the form of land being provided by the state Govt. This way the existing rotten structure of DVB need not be privatized which the Govt. is loathe to, and law-abiding citizens who are not prone to stealing power have an alternative choice.

I kindly request you to take up this letter as a PIL as I had read about you in the papers about you taking up similar cases free of cost. Suitable changes in the draft may be made at your end to suit your requirements. I will be highly obliged if you can take up the above matter.

It has been privatised at last, But at what cost. After crores of rupees of loss to the exchequer. Who will atone for the sins of our bureaucrats and political masters.

Any answers.ANd th milions who die everyday on the streets.