The BRPL and the BYPL have installed these bill payment kiosks at their customer care centers and division offices. These would provide customers with an option of paying their electricity bill without the hassle of standing in queues.

These kiosks equipped with the next generation barcode scanners and MICR readers enable customers to make payment through cash, cheque and demand drafts. In the second phase, they will also be configured to accept payments through credit cards and debit cards.

With multi-lingual (English/Hindi) touch screen interface for easy navigation, these kiosks will help customers with making payments. The kiosks also provide an advanced voice guidance system (in Hindi and English) to assist customers complete the transaction.

According to the BSES, payments can be made even without the copy of the bill. The customer just needs to enter his/her CRN number.

Presently, these kiosks will operate from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Depending on customers' response, they will be opened for 24 hours everyday.

BSES CEO Arun Kanchan said that so far such kiosks have been installed at 10 divisional offices five each in BRPL and BYPL including Jhilmil, Dilshad Garden, Mayur Vihar Phase -- III, Laxmi Nagar, Shankar Road in BYPL and Sarita Vihar, Khanpur, Vikaspuri, Janakpuri and R.K. Puram in BRPL.

The government would shortly roll out an exercise to set up a supervisory control and data acquisition (Scada) system to manage energy generation and transmission systems.

Power Finance Corporation would be the nodal agency for the project covering all cities and towns that have a population of more than 4 lakhs, a government official said.

The project involves preparation of base-line data for consumer indexing, geographical information system (GIS) mapping, metering of transformers and feeders and asset mapping of the entire distribution network, including poles and other equipment. It will also include adoption of information technology applications for meter reading, billing and collection, energy accounting and auditing.

Such a system was necessary to develop applications and tools for preventing faults from developing into large-scale outages the one seen in the US in 2003, the official said.

Government sources said they had procured this expensive peak power at about Rs 7 per unit to avoid any sudden shortfall between demand and supply in the city.

With the approaching festive season, state power minister AK Walia has told all the three discoms, BSES Yamuna, BSES Rajdhani and NDPL, to ensure uninterrupted power supply during Ramzan and Ramlila celebrations in the city. Walia issued this instruction while chairing the weekly power review meeting on Wednesday.

Delhi has been facing a tough time ever since the supply from Damodar Valley failed to come at the right moment leading to outages in the city caused by the sudden shortfall. Delhi chief minister (CM) Sheila Dikshit has approached the Union power ministry over the situation with Damodar Valley. Grid problems also led to several under frequency relays. Delhi had to overdraw up to 400 MW just to keep generation flowing in the city.

Walia has directed discoms to ensure cent percent functioning of streetlight. He further issued directions to discoms to concentrate on round-the-clock power supply and avoid frequent power cuts. He has also asked Discoms to go for short-term power procurement so that power supply is ensured irrespective of weather fluctuations. Discoms have to be keep him abreast about difficulties being faced by them so that timely solution could be arrived.

Taking note of the frequent power cuts that have been plaguing the city for the past several days, Ms. Dikshit had recently asked the distribution companies to arrange for more power and desist from load-shedding. The directive to ensure power supply at night, especially in areas where Ramzan will be observed, comes hot on the heels of the previous order.

However, despite the frequent orders, the Capital on Tuesday continued to reel under power shortage and had to overdraw 300 MW to 350 MW from the Northern Grid. With one unit of Indraprastha, Pragati and Badarpur Thermal Plant shut down, the city's total generation stood at 1,171 MW.

Sources in the Power Department said the power crunch was aggravated by the dip in production at Nathpa Jhakri. In the absence of adequate water supply, power production at Nathpa Jhakri has dipped by around 400 MW. Reduction in the production at Rihand, Singrauli and Unchahar has also left the city facing a shortfall.

The maximum load on Tuesday was 3,736 MW at 4-30 p.m.

The demand in the evening was recorded at 3,846 MW while the shortfall was about 107 MW, a senior official of the Power Department said.

Several parts of the city faced load-shedding for varying duration today but officials claimed the situation was improving.

"We had to resort to load-shedding for six times because of the shortfall," a senior official said.

To meet the shortfall, Delhi is overdrawing 136 MW of power which is under permissible level, he said.

Many areas including Dwarka and Noida went without power yesterday as well as today for several hours.

Power cuts ranging from a few minutes to a few hours were reported from across the Capital on Tuesday. With a dip in power generation at the city's generation plants and two units of Nathpa Jhakri being shut down for maintenance work, the peak hour shortfall hovered between 250 MW and 300 MW.

Power cuts ranging from 30 minutes to several hours were reported from several areas due to "under-frequency". According to the Delhi Government's Power Department officials, one unit each of Gas Turbine Plant, Pragati Plant and Rajghat Power Plant have been shut down due to technical reasons, causing a shortfall of 259 MW.

"The shortfall on account of planned outages, which occur while the plants are shut for maintenance, was about 150 MW. Two units of Nathpa Jhakri, six of Gas Turbine, one each of Rihand and Unchahar-1 have been shut down on account of maintenance work," an official said.

To make up for the loss in generation and the shortfall, the Capital overdrew around 400 MW from the Northern Grid.

Applicants need to fill a declaration form.

In order to bring consumers under correct tariff category according to their usage of electricity and to minimise unauthorised use of electricity and align sanctioned load with the actual need of load, Delhi Power Minister A. K. Walia on Thursday announced a new month-long amnesty scheme that would open on August 25.

Announcing the scheme, Dr. Walia said the Delhi Government wanted to end harassment being faced by the consumers and therefore decided to offer the new amnesty scheme that would benefit the consumers by ensuring correct billing.

He said the plan would also enhance consumer satisfaction.

Under the scheme conversion from domestic to commercial, agriculture to domestic and industrial to commercial would be allowed.

On the other hand conversion from domestic or commercial to industrial would also be allowed on production of a valid license issued by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.

The scheme would also be of immense help to consumers who use power for both domestic and non-domestic purposes. It will also be available to those consumers who wish to get their load enhanced without any change of category.

Dr. Walia said the applicants would have to fill an application or declaration form and submit a test report for the revised load and revised category along with an identification proof and photocopy of latest paid receipt of electricity bill.

Fearing backlash ahead of the Assembly polls in Delhi, the ruling Congress Government would meet Union Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde to ensure adequate power supply. The power crisis may hit the Congress in the election which is already facing strong anti-incumbency factor. The Opposition BJP may spoil their plan in the election.

As per agreement, the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) has failed to supply 400 megawatt of power to Delhi. Upset with the development, Power Minister AK Walia has expressed his deep concern over non-availability of power from the DVC, which may result into acute problem during next few months. He said that there was an agreement with DVC for supply of 400 MW power to Delhi. "Later on it agreed to supply 150 MW power as its few units were non-functional though promised, supply was never supplied to Delhi," he said. Walia had earlier taken up this matter with Union Power Ministry.

According to Walia, he would meet Union Power Minister and apprise him about Delhi's concern. He would stress upon the need of supply of promised power from the DVC.

The trend of using metal coating on manjhas can be highly dangerous as these strings can not only make transmission lines trip, but also electrocute people.

In a bid to meet the energy requirements for commonwealth games 2010, New Delhi needs its power production to increase from the current capacity of 4,500 MW to over 7,000 MW. This power is expected to be supplied by three plants being built by the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) and two power plants by National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC). The committee found that of the five plants, power purchase agreements (PPAs) were not yet signed for DVC's Bawana power project while fuel linkage has not been secured for the Bamnoli plant.

The decision to restructure the Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Programme (APDRP) covering 571 projects in the first phase was taken by the Union Cabinet at its meeting here.

"Out of the Rs 17,033 crore, the grant component is Rs 6,445 crore and the loan component is Rs 2,274 crore," finance minister P Chidambaram told reporters after the Cabinet meeting. He added that the loan would be for those who accept certain parameters both in the utility areas and project areas.

"The team had disconnected power meters of a few houses. At that, angry women from the locality gheraoed the stuff and started beating them" said Rohit Katiyar, CISF spokesman.

Four jawans and a constable of the CISF sustained minor injuries, he said. Not satisfied with the "punishment", the mob circled the local office of the distcom and pelted stones on it for about half hour, besides intimidating and threatening the staff, sources said.

Residents claimed the enforcement team had wrongly disconnected meters. "They did not listen to us, nor did they look at our documents.

They just consulted their files and took away the meters," said Babu Ram, a resident. But sources said the raids in the offing for long.

Records show 70 per cent theft in the area. "People have been tapping power from overhead wires, tampering with meters.

Several others have been simply not paying their bills. The raid was inevitable," said a senior official.

The distcom has filed an FIR at the Mehrauli police station. This was almost a repeat of what happened in Najafgarh about a month ago.

Last month, Najafgarh residents took to the streets, and in a similar manner, beat up BSES officials and damaged its installations, including office. The Lieutenant-Governor had to step in.

Areas that suffered the outages include Connaught Place, Lodhi Road, Khan market, Delhi secretariat, office buildings in ITO and some parts of east Delhi. Said Manju Batra, who works in CP: ``Almost all the office buildings were in darkness in the afternoon for over two hours. This is rare.'' Delhi lost out on about 180 MW power with the shutdown of the Rajghat and Indraprastha power stations in the peak afternoon. Local generation was a mere 890 MW while the demand touched 3,700 MW. ``The electricity demand has fallen since Saturday's rainfall in Delhi.

The company has come across a large number of cases where electricity connections are being used for purposes other than those applied for. According to the company, the practice is especially prevalent in farmhouses where consumers though using the premises for residential purposes or as a weekend getaway, have taken electricity connection under the "agriculture" category.

This, according the BSES, is a gross violation of the prevailing Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission and Indian Electricity Act, 2003, guidelines. "There are around 5,000 cases where farmhouse owners have applied for agricultural connections. While there are 4,863 in the BRPL area, BYPL has 82 such connections. These are cumulatively consuming around 17,500 kW of electricity in the BSES licensed area," said a BSES official.

The company is now planning to crack down on such blatant misuse of electricity connections that is causing a significant monetary loss to BSES. The category of an electricity connection is governed by the nature and use of a property. For example, a "domestic" category connection is only meant for residential purposes. It cannot be used for "commercial" or "industrial" purposes. Similarly, a "commercial" connection is only meant for premises with "commercial" activity.

The counsel for the government, submitted before a bench comprising chief justice K. G. Balakrishnan and justices Dalveer Bhandari and H.S. Bedi that power is not available in Delhi and other states are not willing to sell power to Delhi because they are themselves facing similar shortage.

Counsel for the government, however, submitted that the government would take all possible steps to augment the generation of power in Delhi.

Amicus-curiae Ranjit Kumar stated that people in Delhi are being subjected to long power cuts, but the affidavit of the government is silent on the issue of solving the current power crisis in Delhi.

However, it claims that people in Delhi will be in better condition on the power front in 2009-10. The apex court directed the government to file a status report within two weeks.