The Delhi High Court on Tuesday asked the Delhi Vidyut Board, to submit within one week, what they had done to stop the harassment of consumers, who have been over-billed or improperly billed for many years.Justice Jaspal Singh, hearing Common Cause's Public Interest Litigation (PIL) on power theft, also directed the board to come up with concrete suggestions to stop the harassment.DVB Chairman Navin Chawla and counsel for DVB Jayant Nath said the Board had initiated several schemes to stop power theft in slum areas and industrial units.Nath said the board has issued 60,000 bijli cards in various slum clusters across the capital for the purpose of providing electricity to the slums at a flat rate.For the industrial units, Nath said a voluntary load disclosure scheme has been floated, in addition to these, regular raids were carried out to stop power theft.The DVB has collected over Rs 9 crore as fines from those found stealing electricity, he said.Justice Singh pointed out that thesesteps taken to stop the criminals. The judge wanted to know what had been done to ensure that a honest consumer was not getting an inflated bill.Common Cause President H D Shourie said it was a good idea to monitor the working of various DVB schemes but the board had yet to take into account the measures suggested by the M S Vasant committee earlier.Welcoming the idea of mobile courts, he requested that he court look into the shortage of police personnel while conducting raids.Nath said the police commissioner should be asked to provide personnel on deputation to the Board so that they would be available to the raiding party at any given point.Justice Singh asked Chawla what action has been taken against employees for issuing bills on average for years together. Chawla conceded that it was a long way before DVB could satisfy the consumers.However, he asserted the willingness of the Board to set right the house through various measures.The judge said the employees should be made accountable byensuring that they face the consequences if they do not do their duty properly. The matter will come for hearing on February 24.Three Uphaar fire accused given bailA Delhi court today granted bail to three Uphaar-cinema-fire-case accused. The court also regularised the anticipatory bail given to two others on an earlier occasion, when all the 16 accused had appeared on summons here.The 11 accused were arrested by the police and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), after the accident in June last year. They were granted bail by the court even before the chargesheet had been filed by the CBI in December. The fire had claimed 59 lives.Metropolitan Magistrate Brijesh Sethi directed a former PWD Executive Engineer S N Dandona, Fitter Shyam Sunder and Muncipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) official N D Tiwari to furnish a personal bond of Rs 15,000 and a surety of the same amount.The court, however, regularised the anticipatory bail given to Gopal Ansal, one of the owners of Uphaar cinema,and a Delhi Fire Services (DFS) official A K Ghera. The court directed each of them to furnish a personal bond of Rs 25,000 and a surety of the same amount.
