Chandigarh: The Punjab govt on Tuesday said 63,702 consumers who received provisional electricity bills during the April-July meter readers’ strike would not lose their 300-unit free power benefit, even as Congress MLA and former IAS officer Balwinder Singh Dhaliwal questioned the billing errors and demanded accountability.Power minister Tarunpreet Singh Sond said eligible consumers affected by provisional billing would continue to get the benefit and that genuine complaints of unusually high bills would be resolved within 15 days. A dedicated helpline and a 20-member PSPCL team will handle billing complaints, he said.Sond said provisional bills were issued when meter readings could not be obtained during the strike and were based on previous average consumption. The bills were to be reconciled after actual readings became available. He said such reconciliation could result in unusually high bills but was not, by itself, a billing error.He also said billing problems had emerged after PSPCL shifted from its earlier SAP and non-SAP systems to a unified Single Billing System in January 2026. Data migration and software issues led to incorrect meter-reading data in some cases.Bills showing consumption substantially above normal levels will now be flagged and withheld for verification, Sond said. He added that a show-cause notice had been issued to the concerned outsourcing company.PSPCL CMD Basant Garg said the utility had identified affected cases and was reconciling provisional bills with actual consumption. Consumers would ultimately be charged only for electricity actually used, while payments already made would be adjusted in their accounts.Dhaliwal, meanwhile, questioned how 63,000 consumers could receive incorrect or inflated bills. He said Punjab had around 78 lakh electricity consumers and that billing errors on such a scale raised questions about the functioning of the power department.He also said some families living abroad had received bills for locked houses and that several consumers had received bills for three months together because readings were not issued on time.“How can an ordinary consumer be declared a defaulter when the department itself failed to issue the bill on time?” Dhaliwal asked.He also questioned recovery of outstanding electricity dues from govt departments, referring to a Aug 13 letter issued by PSPCL CMD Basant Garg to all divisions. “Why is strict action being taken only against ordinary consumers?” he asked.
