Recently, the government has notified the Electricity (Rights of Consumers) Rules, 2020, which would allow consumers in India to access a continuous supply of reliable electricity. It also contains rules provided for penalties for power distribution firms in case they do not maintain mandated standards of services.
The rules cover various aspects of power supply to consumers in the country, including obligations of distribution licensees, metering arrangements, the release of new connections, modifications of existing connections, grievance redressal and compensation mechanisms.
The rules were necessary because the distribution companies across the country are monopolies, both government and private, and this gives the consumer no other alternative. The new rules comprise provisions that will make the distribution companies more accountable to consumers.
There are various benefits of Electricity (Rights of Consumers) Rules, 2020 :–
- Making the distribution companies more accountable to consumers, thus reducing their monopolies and giving consumers more alternatives.
- To ensure compliance, the government will apply penalties that will be credited to the consumer’s account.
- These rules are also an important step towards furthering the ease of doing business across the country. Implementation of these Rules shall ensure that new electricity connections, refunds and other services are given in a time-bound manner.
Provisions under this Electricity (Rights of Consumers) Rules, 2020 are :-
- Duty of every distribution licensee to supply electricity on request made by an owner or occupier of any premises in line with the provisions of Act. Right of consumers to have minimum standards of service for the supply of electricity from the distribution licensee.
- An applicant has an option for online application. The maximum time period of 7 days in metro cities and 15 days in other municipal areas and 30 days in rural areas identified to provide new connections and modify an existing connection.
- No connection shall be given without a meter. Meter shall be the smart prepayment meter or a prepayment meter. Provision of Testing of meters.
- Transparency in applicable consumer tariff and bills.
- The distribution licensee shall supply 24×7 power to all consumers. However, lower hours of supply for some categories of consumers like agriculture could be specified. The distribution licensee shall put in place a mechanism, preferably with automated tools to the extent possible, for monitoring and restoring outages.
- The prosumers will maintain consumer status and have the same rights as the general consumer, they will also have the right to set up Renewable Energy (RE) generation units including rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. A prosumer is an individual who both consumes and produces.
- Standards of performance for the distribution licensees will be notified. Compensation amount to be paid to the consumers by the distribution licensees for violation of standards of performance.
- Automatic compensation shall be paid to consumers for which parameters on standards of performance can be monitored remotely.
- Distribution licensee shall establish a centralised 24×7 toll-free call centre. Licensees shall endeavour to provide all services through a common Customer Relation Manager (CRM) System to get a unified view.
- Consumer Grievance Redressal Forum (CGRF) to include consumer and prosumer representatives. It has been made easy by making it multi-layered and the number of consumer’s representatives have been increased from one to four. The licensee shall specify the time within which various types of grievances by the different levels of the forums are to be resolved. Maximum timeline of 45 days specified for grievance redressal.
These new provisions will provide better assistance to the public and create a transparent system of monitoring electricity. This move will not only benefit people in metropolitan cities but also in the rural areas. Continuous electric and power supply will provide ease of living and it would be easier to manage bills and electricity consumption.
