Uncollected power tax : Consumers reel under power cuts
Dues of Rs 691.09 Cr yet to be collected as of Feb 2025
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, September 19 2026: Even as Manipur has been witnessing frequent disruptions in power supply over the past many weeks, the Manipur State Power Distribution Company Limited (MSPDCL) has been unable to collect electricity dues amounting to Rs 691.09 crore from consumers as of February 2025 .

Significantly the MSPDCL had on September 16 announced temporary, rotational power cuts or load shedding across the State citing severe power supply constraints, facing a critical shortage of 90 MW .

An audit report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) for the period ended March 31, 2024, also mentioned that Rs 24 crore was outstanding against High Tension consumers in six audit-sampled divisions as of March 2024 .

However, neither the corporate nor its division offices concerned had taken steps to recover the outstanding dues or disconnect the power supply of the defaulters, it said.

The report said that outstanding electricity dues increased from Rs 515.51 crore in 2018-19 to Rs 691.09 crore by the end of 2023-24 .

According to Clause 6.32 of the Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission (Manipur and Mizoram) Electricity Supply Code Regulations, 2013, the power supply of consumers who fail to clear their bills within the 15-day notice period is required to be disconnected.

As such, the rising outstanding electricity dues indicate that MSPDCL has neither been able to recover the bills from defaulters nor disconnect their power supply, as required under the regulations.

Moreover, the non-collection of dues from power consumers has adversely affected the financial position of MSPDCL, leaving it unable to clear power purchase bills on time and resulting in the payment of surcharges.

According to the report, MSPDCL paid Rs 14 crore to the North Eastern Electric Power Corporation Limited (NEEPCO) towards power purchases for the period from 2017-18 to 2020-21 .

Upon further scrutiny, it was found that NEEPCO deducted Rs 10.33 crore from the amount as a surcharge for delayed payment of power purchase bills by MSPDCL .

The Rs 10.33 crore could have been saved or utilised elsewhere had the power purchase bills been paid on time.

Among other observations, the report mentioned that MSPDCL could not achieve the 100 per cent metering target set by the Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission (JERC) for Manipur and Mizoram, as 65,587 consumers remained unmetered out of a total of 5,60,238 consumers in the State.

It also said that MSPDCL had not completed the installation of feeder meters and Distribution Transformer (DT) meters.

Saying that the installation rate of 11-kV feeder meters stood at 57 per cent, while that of DT meters was only 15 per cent as of March 31, 2024, it added that feeder-wise energy losses for all 11-kV and Low Tension lines could not be ascertained due to the incomplete installation of feeder and DT meters.

In the absence of electricity meters, the report added, the company prepared energy bills for unmetered consumers based on a formula that had been withdrawn by the JERC, without ascertaining the actual quantum of electricity consumed by the consumers.

The report also observed that 75,612 prepaid consumers out of a total of 4,91,820 Low Tension (LT) and High Tension (HT) consumers had not been migrated to the web-based billing system as of March 31, 2021, during the period from April 2018 to March 2024 .

It added that the outstanding amount related to consumers who had not been migrated to the online billing system was not available.

It also said that the absence of migrated consumer data prevented the automated recovery of arrears through the mandated 20 per cent deduction from recharge amounts.

Moreover, the report said that revenue amounting to Rs 54.63 collected by the Yairipok Sub Division under Thoubal Electrical Division during January 2021 to January 2024 was neither remitted into the bank account nor retained in the custody of the cashier, thereby indicating suspected misappropriation.

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