It is not joke but truth that 256 teams comprising of five to six members in each of Haryana Vidyut Prasaran Nigam (HVPN) conducted surprise raids at about 13675 domestic as well as commercial electricity consumers all over in the state, which continued from early morning till late night in which 3365 electricity thefts were detected and amount worth over Rs 3crore was collected towards fine from those involved in power thefts. It was disclosed to media persons by State Power Minister Ranjit Singh Chautala who told that raiding teams disconnected power connection of large number of consumers where theft of electricity was detected. Chautala told that it was 8th surgical strike against those involved in power theft in the state in past two years organized in a highly secret way in which even the members of raiding teams were unaware of the same.
Chautala said that such raids against power theft in the state would continue in future also. He disclosed that earlier such types of surgical strikes against power theft were also held three times in past couple of months in which electricity theft of value worth crores of rupees was detected. Chautala said, raiding teams detected large number of power connections where power supply was available but in official record these electric connections were shown disconnected long ago thus suspecting involvement of officers and staff of electricity department involved in embezzlements and investigation in this regard is going on and action will be taken against those involved in embezzlements, he warned.
According to information, apart from chief minister and electricity minister only a handful of senior bureaucrats of Haryana state government including V. Umashanker Chief Secretary, P.K. Das Secretary Power Supply Department, Alok Kumar Mittal Chief CID and P.K. Aggarwal DGP Haryana were aware of this surgical strike. Ranjit Chautala said that due to such search operations HVPN has witnessed much reduction in line losses and all four electricity companies earlier facing losses have earned profit nearly Rs 2000 crore.
According to information, among five towns where maximum number of power theft cases were detected include Panipat ranking at the first place detected having 205 cases of power theft and amount worth Rs 62.98 lakh was recovered towards fine followed by Rohtak where raiding teams detected 196 cases of power theft in which amount worth Rs 40.98 lakh was recovered towards fine, 195 electricity theft cases were detected at Bhiwani in which amount worth Rs 26.16 lakh was recovered from defaulters, raiding teams detected 192 power theft cases at Jind recovering amount worth Rs 26.36 lakh towards fine and Kaithal was ranking at fifth place as regard power thefts in which amount worth Rs 40.62 lakh was recovered in 186 cases of power theft.
