Major power theft detected in border belt
Rs 24 lakh fine imposed
Varinder Walia and PK Jaiswar
Tribune News Service

Cheecha (Amritsar), July 12
Farmers had to pay heavily after they ransacked the Khasa Power Sub-Station and blocked the Amritsar-Nankana Sahib bus a couple of days back, even as the Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB) today detected a major power theft in the border-belt area and imposed whopping Rs 24.02 lakh as penalty on those involved in stealing electricity.

However, the question is if Rs 24 lakh penalty can be imposed by the PSEB in a single day, what will be the magnitude of the menace of power theft in the state.

As many as 14 operation and enforcement teams of the PSEB from all over the state today accompanied by police parties visited every field of the village to check the load on 49 transformers that comes under 11 KV Cheecha-Mahmoodpura feeder, which was damaged by farmers during protests against the shortage of power supply.

During eight-hour operation, the PSEB teams detected 139 cases of unauthorised extension of power load to the tune of 459 Break Horse Power, besides 12 cases of direct theft.

Cases have been registered against Jaswant Singh, Lakhbir Singh, Avatar Singh, Kartar Singh, Lakhbir Singh, Kuldeep Singh, Bakshish Singh, Amarjit Singh, Larlok Singh, Tarsem Singh, all residents of Cheecha and Sucha Singh of Ladhowal in this regard.

Chief Engineer, PSEB, Rajiv Kumar said the teams did not find even a single transformer without any irregularity. He said eight transformers had been damaged due to overload in the past few days and these transformers would not be replaced until the farmers regularised their power load.

Farmers had ransacked the sub-station, besides manhandling officials, including sub-station operator Haracharan Singh and Additional SDO Khasa Prem Kumar Maini, on July 10. They were protesting against shortage of power supply. Earlier, Additional SE Amrik Singh was also beaten up on June 22 for launching drive against power theft.

A senior official said the feeder was shut down as it got tripped a number of times, besides damaging of transformers due to overload had resulted in continuous power interruption in the area.

After the incident, the PSEB officials here had taken up the matter with its chairman, who further raised the issue with the government that directed the district and police administration to provide security to the raiding teams.