Plea for monthly power bill rejected

KSEB says bimonthly pattern beneficial to consumers

A Division Bench of the Kerala High Court on Thursday dismissed a public interest litigation seeking a directive to the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) to introduce monthly bill system for all domestic consumers in view of the exorbitant bimonthly bills issued for the lockdown period.

The petition was filed by Vinay Kumar M.C. of Muvattupuzha.

According to him, if the billing periodicity was made monthly, the consumers would be spared of the burden of paying huge amounts as electricity charges.

KSEB stance

The KSEB submitted that the bimonthly pattern of billing was beneficial to the consumers. In fact, the periodicity of issuing bills to domestic consumers with connected loads below 20 kilo Watts and monthly consumption below 500 units was bimonthly.

The periodicity in the case of all other consumers in the domestic category was monthly.

Besides, more than 75% of the total consumers, which come to almost 97 lakh, were now being billed in the bimonthly cycle.

Doubling of labour

Converting them to the monthly cycle would lead to doubling of the labour.

The KSEB pointed out that the increase in the consumption of domestic consumers during the months of March, April and May this year was considerable because they had stayed indoors owing to the lockdown.