The local bodies in Coimbatore district paid over ₹ 6.28 crore in electricity bills for defunct borewells without any consumption of electricity, claimed K. Kathirmathiyon, secretary for Coimbatore Consumer Cause (CCC).
In a letter to Municipal Administration and Water Supply Department and Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Department written on October 31, he urged the authorities to disconnect the power supply for abandoned borewells in addition to closing them. “When the borewells are not used and no electricity is utilised, even for nil consumption, the local bodies have to remit a fixed charge [of] ₹120 per kilowatt,” Mr. Kathirmathiyon said in the letter.
Based on data available from Tangedco since 2007, the CCC found that a sum of ₹ 28 lakh per bimonthly bill was spent for the 3,396 abandoned borewells and that the total amount calculated since 2007 came to ₹ 6,28,95,610, according to the letter.
The computerised data from Tangedco was available only since 2007. “Hence, many of those borewells might be not in use even much earlier to 2007,” Mr. Kathirmathiyon claimed.
Claiming that this scenario could not be limited only to Coimbatore district and might be the case across Tamil Nadu, Mr. Kathirmathiyon termed it as a “gross mismanagement of finance by local bodies” in the letter.
Mr. Kathirmathiyon urged the authorities to instruct all the local bodies to identify and surrender the electricity connections for the abandoned borewells for which electricity bills were allegedly being paid.
