Gurgaon: Jind, Hisar and Bhiwani account for two-thirds — or 65.8% — of Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam’s (DHBVN’s) Rs Rs 4,800 crore power dues. Adding Faridabad and the two city circles takes the concentration to about Rs 3,844 crore — 80.1% —of the total.Jind accounts for nearly a third of DHBVN’s defaulting amount, revealing a striking geographical concentration of unpaid power bills across south Haryana. Data shows Jind circle had Rs 1,587.8 crore in outstanding dues — 33.1% — of DHBVN’s total Rs 4,799.9 crore. Even more strikingly, Jind city division alone accounted for Rs 1,264.2 crore, or more than a quarter of the discom’s total dues.The concentration becomes clearer when the other large circles are added. Hisar had Rs 950.8 crore and Bhiwani Rs 620.1 crore in outstanding dues. Together with Jind, the three circles accounted for Rs 3,158.7 crore of DHBVN’s total defaulting amount.The city’s share, meanwhile, is relatively modest. “The two city circles — Gurgaon-1 and Gurgaon-2 — together had Rs 266.5 crore outstanding, accounting for 5.5% of DHBVN’s total dues,” said an official of DHBVN.The figures also show that the problem is not moving uniformly across the discom’s geography. DHBVN’s total dues increased 3.6%, from Rs 4,633.1 crore at the end of March to Rs 4,799.9 crore at the end of Aug. But some circles recorded much sharper changes. Sirsa’s dues rose 42.9%, Fatehabad’s 21.1% and Rewari’s 45.7%, while Gurgaon-2 recorded a 38.9% decline, largely because Badshapur’s outstanding amount fell 83.8%.Jind’s position as the biggest contributor to DHBVN’s unpaid power bills is not a recent aberration. “The district has been among the discom’s biggest defaulters for more than a decade, with successive recovery drives, waiver schemes, disconnections and even political interventions failing to prevent arrears from rebuilding,” said the officer.In 2015, Jind had Rs 1,071 crore in power dues involving 1.3 lakh defaulters. About 85% of the outstanding amount was owed by rural consumers, while 50,975 connections had already been disconnected against dues of Rs 260 crore. The remaining 88,607 defaulters owed Rs 811 crore.Three years later, the figure was still around Rs 1,300 crore. In 2018, DHBVN officials told TOI that the arrears had accumulated over several years and that 92% of the defaulters were from the domestic category. Officials also attributed the payment problem to repeated expectations of electricity-bill waivers and instances where connections were not disconnected despite prolonged non-payment.By 2019, Jind was again being described as the state’s biggest power-bill defaulter, with around Rs 1,500 crore outstanding. A govt scheme had reportedly settled about Rs 1,000 crore, leaving Rs 500 crore to be recovered. The state was also looking at prepaid smart meters as a way of preventing fresh arrears.The numbers subsequently fell and rose again. In 2022-23, a surcharge-waiver scheme brought Jind’s dues down temporarily to around Rs 1,200 crore, but by April 2025 the outstanding amount had climbed to Rs 1,470.99 crore, despite DHBVN recovering about Rs 138 crore during the preceding year.The latest Rs 1,587.8 crore figure therefore suggests that recovery is not keeping pace with the accumulation of fresh arrears. The discom has used disconnections, village campaigns, instalment and surcharge-waiver schemes, election-related NOCs and theft drives.In 2015, making a no-dues certificate mandatory for panchayat election candidates generated about Rs 5.5 crore in electricity-bill payments in Jind in just 10 days. In 2025, DHBVN reported Rs 138 crore recovered from Jind consumers in a year. It has also been cutting connections when bills cross Rs 10,000, after issuing two notices. At the state level, Haryana in April 2026 ordered that permanently disconnected consumers be served notices within 15 days for recovery under the Land Recovery Act, as part of a campaign targeting Rs 8,200 crore in outstanding electricity dues statewide.
