NEW DELHI: The Delhi Residents' Welfare Associations Joint Front has demanded immediate convening of a "Jan Sunwai'' (public hearing) to listen to the grievances pertaining to the water and power crisis confronting the Capital.

It has demanded that Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, BSES Chairman Anil Ambani, DPCC president Ram Babu Sharma and power-related Grievances Committee convenor Subhash Chopra be present at the public hearing.

Charging that the power privatisation experiment in Delhi had failed miserably, the Delhi RWAs' Joint Front demanded that the Union Government or Parliamentary Committee carry out an appraisal of the privatisation experiment in Delhi without competition, as it was more detrimental to the interests of the consumers. "Till such time as competition is introduced, the Delhi Government should take back the control of private distribution companies and hand it over to Navratna companies like National Thermal Power Corporation. The consumers want privatisation but not the Delhi model.''

According to Delhi RWAs Joint Front secretary Pankaj Aggarwal, these decisions were taken collectively at a meeting of the RWAs held last week.

Expressing concern over the power and water situation especially in the BSES-run areas, Mr. Aggarwal said consumers should be given the option to choose between the new electronic meters or the ISI marked electro-mechanical meters.

Notifications should be issued by the authorities about the verbal decision that no electro-mechanical meter would be replaced by an electronic meter without the consumer's consent.

Mr. Aggarwal said it was also decided that the discoms should take responsibility of detecting and removing the so-called effects of wiring -- earth, leakage, neutral -- which have cropped up after the installation of electronic meters. This has resulted in erroneous billing for energy not consumed by the consumers. The High Court judgment of December 14 last year had established that inflated bills were being served on the consumers due to faulty wiring and other meter-related matters.

The consumers have been forced to pay for much more than what they had actually consumed and the discoms as well as the Delhi Government failed in their duty to educate the consumers about this. Since the BSES did not check the wiring and neutral at the time of installing electronic meters, the responsibility for setting it right also rests on it.

Mr. Aggarwal said over 13 lakh meters had been changed without any reason involving wastage of Rs. 250 crores. Incidentally, Ms. Dikshit had herself described it as "meter terrorism''.

Such consumers who have been subjected to forcible change of meters should be given refund and their original meters re-installed, he demanded, adding that in case of inflated and disputed bills the average of six months or one year's consumption prior to the fixation of the new meter should be the base for settlement and also for future billing till the matter is resolved.

He said the power tariff should be decided on the basis of cost of procurement plus reasonable distribution cost.

At present the average cost of procurement is approximately Rs.1.93 per unit, while the average selling rate per unit is a whopping Rs.4.50. The selling price should not exceed Rs.2.60 per unit, he said.

Mr. Aggarwal said the agreement with discoms gave them an assured pre-tax 24 per cent (post-tax 16 per cent) per annum return, which was abnormal. "The RWAs therefore are in favour of a total review of these agreements and for throwing them open for public scrutiny."

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