JERC tells Admn not to charge transaction fee for bill payment

Tribune News Service

Dushyant Singh Pundir

Chandigarh, April 1

Providing relief to the residents, the Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission (JERC) has directed the UT Electricity Department not to levy transaction charges for payment of bills through the Sampark Centres.

Filing suggestions/objections against a petition filed by the department for a hike in power tariff before the Commission, stakeholders submitted that the department was forcing the consumers to pay high transaction charges in payment of bills through the Sampark Centres. “They are charging Rs 10 per bill for online payment and Rs 20 for offline payment of bills,” stated the stakeholders.

The Electricity Department has no arrangement for payment of bills and is entirely dependent on the Sampark Centres (and online Sampark portal). For the past more than 10 years, they have not paid any transaction charges and now from March, 2023, the centres have started demanding exorbitant charges. Many electricity boards do not demand extra charges for the online payment of bills.

They further stated that the JERC had never approved the charging of such a fee from the consumers in the Supply Code. The action of the department in forcing the consumers to pay high fee without approval/public hearing is illegal and against the Electricity Act. Recently, the National Payment Corporation of India had directed all payment apps not to charge any platform/transaction fee from consumers.

Therefore, the stakeholder requested the commission that till some arrangements were made by the department to adopt modes of digital payments other than Sampark Centres, they should be restrained from charging any transaction fee for payments of bills and only the department should bear the cost (if any).

In its response, the department submitted that the facilitation charges for payment of electricity bills to be collected by Sampark Centres have not been imposed by the department. Instead, it is a policy decision taken at the level of the Chandigarh Administration to provide facilitation fees/charges to the Sampark Centres for various services, which are being offered by the Sampark Centres. The department has not proposed any of these charges either in Tariff Petition, nor has the same been approved by the commission.

The commission directed the department to ensure that these transaction charges/fees are not being recovered from the consumers and are being borne by the department.

Providing relief to power consumers, the commission has turned down the petition filed by the department for an increase in power tariff for 2023-24.

Strongly opposing the proposed hike, stakeholders stated that the department should improve its functioning in cutting the costs by purchasing cheaper power. They should improve their functioning to provide quality of power at cheaper rates.

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