Those who have been using illegal power connections — popularly known as “katia” connection in the local parlance — will now get to see the writing on the wall. Almost, literally.
The Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited will be writing the names of regular and honest consumers on the walls of their houses in black, thereby embarrassing the ones who use electricity without paying bills.
Managing director of UPPCL, A.P. Misra told reporters that the power corporation will now rely on social pressure to make the erring consumers get their connections regularised and check power theft.
“For all regular consumers, we will be writing the name of the consumer and his connection number in black over a yellow background on the wall. The irregular ones will be easily identified when they have no wall writing on their houses. We hope that the black sheep will succumb to pressure and get their power connections regularised,” he said.
Mr Misra further said that the UPPCL has now asked its engineers to maintain a register of consumers in their areas and assess as to how many of them are paying their bills on a regular basis. An exhaustive record will be kept of the consumers and produced before the corporation time to time to allow the officials to make an assessment of defaulters in an area.
The biggest problem of illegal connections, meanwhile, comes from the rural areas and this scheme is likely to be extended to the rural interiors as well.
Out of the 41 lakh power consumers in rural areas, only about one-fourth pay their bills regularly.