Jharkhand Bijli Vitran Nigam cut off power at HEC’s plant and headquarters at 1:50 pm on Tuesday. Due to this production came to a complete halt. Later, according to the corporation, HEC owes Rs 129.42 crore of electricity bill. HEC has not paid electricity bill after January 2020. Hence this action has been taken. This is the first instance in the history of Jharkhand, when the power of HEC has been cut. Earlier, electricity was cut for about four hours during the time of United Bihar, when it was put in the list of BIMARU companies.
Energy Secretary Avinash Kumar said that continuous notice was being given to HEC to pay the dues. But did not pay. That’s why the power was turned off. Power was restored after nine hours at 10:50 pm on the request of HEC management and assurance of early payment of dues. It is worth mentioning that five months ago, a meeting was held between the Corporation and HEC Management under the chairmanship of the Director of Industries. In this, HEC had said that it will soon tell how the payment will be done. Now the meeting of this committee is to be held again on Wednesday.Company Secretary cum Spokesperson of HEC Abhay Kanth said – All three plants were closed due to power cut. Due to the stagnation of production, there was a loss of about one crore rupees in a day. Heating work for defense equipment is going on in the plant. Metals were wasted due to lack of electricity. Furnaces and other big machines were also shut down, which are required to be operational 24 hours. If the power supply is not started soon, the equipment put in the furnace will also get damaged and the HEC may have to suffer heavy losses.
HEC has taken connection of 16 KVA load of electricity. Every month uses electricity worth three to three and a half crores. In July also, the electricity bill of HEC came to Rs 2.99 crore. PK Srivastava, GM of Ranchi Area Board of JBVNL, said that HEC is being given Maca for 20 months. They were neither paying routine bills nor arrears. Along with giving the notice, the officers of the corporation had also requested the officials of HEC to pay the bill. Still not paid.Earlier, the central government had deducted Rs 714 crore from the account of the Jharkhand government for the dues of Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC). On the orders of the Union Ministry of Power, the Reserve Bank of India had sent this amount to the account of the Central Government. Along with this, the Ministry had also sent a notice to the State Energy Department to deposit Rs 2100 crore of dues. Earlier, the central government had deducted Rs 1417 crore in October-2020 and Rs 714 crore in January-2021. The politics between the Center and the state is hot on this.
(EW Correspondent)
