Operationalise consumer grievance forums in 4 months: UPERC to UPPCL

The UP Electricity Regulatory Commission (UPERC) has taken a serious view of the defunct Consumer Grievance Redress Forums (CGRFs) across Uttar Pradesh and directed the power department bosses to act promptly to operationalise all these bodies which were set up to give relief to power consumers.
“The Commission directs that all efforts should be made at the level of the chairman, MDs of UPPCL and discoms to ensure the effective functioning of all CGRFs up to the level of circle in the next four months in accordance with the regulations and directions of the commission,” said the UPERC in its order on April 16, adding that “The Commission will schedule another review after four months.”
The commission pointed out that the regulation explicitly stated that CGRFs shall be established within 60 days from the date of notification of UPERC CGRF Regulations.
“However, due to indifferent approach of the licensees, wherein the tenure of old CGRFs was gradually coming to an end and the new CGRFs were not being constituted, compelled the Commission to initiate suo – moto proceedings in the matter,” the commission observed in the order by chairman Arvind Kumar and two other members.
It further said that during the hearing on May 11, 2023, chairman UPPCL had committed that CGRFs up to circle level ‘shall’ be made functional by the end of May 2023.
“But despite providing reliefs/clarifications, as requested by them, Discoms have acted in an agonizingly tardy manner and have constituted only 56 CGRFs out of the required 165 upto circle level till date,” the order said.
The commission said that it had been observed that about 35% of the members being nominated for these forums were overage, about 11% of the nominated members were not having electricity connections in their name and about 54% members were not conforming to the requirement of “civil servant but not below the rank of ADM”.
“Since these stipulations are clearly spelt out in the regulations, the nominations should have been scrutinized before being forwarded or approval of the Commission. That is the least that the Commission can expect from the licensees,” said the Commission.
The Commission while expressing displeasure over the situation observed that DVVNL (Agra discom) was the worst performing among all discoms, where only about 16% of CGRFs from company level to circle level have been constituted followed by MVVNL (Lucknow) with 30% PVVNL with 32 percent and PuVVNL(Varanasi) with 48%.
The Commission took note of the performance of KESCO and observed that even office space had not yet been provided for three circle level CGRFs.
During the hearing MD, UPPCL, Pankaj Kumar mentioned that directions were being issued from UPPCL for speedy formation and operationalization of CGRFs and assured that after completion of election process fresh advertisements would be issued for seeking applications for nomination of members.