Puducherry Lt. Governor’s unique initiative to recover unpaid electricity dues is a success

The Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry, Kiran Bedi’s unique initiative to ‘name and shame’ defaulters who failed to pay their dues has yielded excellent results on the very first day. Executing the strategy proposed by the LG, the Puducherry Electricity Department published the names of those who had not paid their electricity dues. As result of this, the electricity department collected Rs. 14 Lakh on the very first day. The unique initiative was taken as a last resort when several warnings to the defaulters failed to yield satisfactory results.

Many departments in Puducherry are facing severe fund crunches. The electricity department of Puducherry had unpaid bills worth 120 crore rupees. To overcome this problem of unpaid dues, the Lt. Governor instructed the electricity department to publish the names of the defaulters in newspapers and also announce the defaulters’ names on FM radio channels. The Lt. Governor, Kiran Bedi, also said that from Wednesday onward, the names of defaulters will be published in regional language newspapers. According to her, “The objective is to recover power dues which rightly belong to the people to meet infrastructure needs. Name and shame the defaulters and thereby recover your finances which are due from the defaulters. The departments will have enough resources to pay the salaries, clear past bills, and invest in infrastructure.”

According to Deccan Chronicle, in a Whatsapp message, the Lieutenant Governor said, “Jump in power arrears collection in one single day over the counters is Rs 14 lakh. Online collections are yet to be accounted from the banks.”

The initiative proved to be a success from the get go and within a few hours, bills worth lakhs were cleared. On the first day itself, bills worth more than a crore were cleared after everything was accounted for.  As of today, prominent industrial houses have started clearing their bills, and 4 crore rupees have been recovered. After the success, Kiran Bedi said that other unpaid dues such as property tax and municipal fees would also be extracted in the same way.

The local media of Puducherry showered praises on Kiran Bedi for this unique and innovative move. The Lt. Governor appreciated the secretary and director of Local Administration Department (LAD) for initiating such an action successfully and instructed them to ask the other departments to adopt the same strategy employed by the electricity department. Following her instruction, Secretary of LAD  P Jawahar wrote a letter stating that, “Local bodies in Puducherry should also adopt such a strategy to recover their long pending dues, In addition, the local bodies should also proceed action against defaulters by evoking the provisions of Revenue Recovery Act through the district collector.”

Not just the revenue departments of Puducherry, this strategy is something which must be replicated at national level as well and other states should also take similar initiatives. The ‘name and shame’ initiative is among the many laudable steps that Kiran Bedi has taken in Puducherry to bring out transparency and efficiency in administration. She has particularly focused on women safety and cleanliness drives which have yielded favorable results. In contrast to the public image of ‘Raj Niwas’ as an out institution that is beyond the public’s reach, Kiran Bedi has taken a different approach and has been directly involved with the public, and perhaps that is why she has often been called the People’s Governor.