New Delhi:
Amid widespread anger against hike in electricity bills, Delhi's power regulator DERC on Monday made adjustments in the tariff structure which could reduce monthly bills of low-end consumers by around 15 per cent.
In an order, the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission announced reversing its earlier decision to abolishing the 201-400 units slab and introduction of 0-400 units slab for calculation of tariff.
Restoration of original slabs means consumers will be charged Rs 3.70 per unit up to consumption of 200 units while Rs 5.50 will be charged for consumption between 201 and 400 units.
The regulator has hiked per unit rate by 10 paisa for consumption beyond 400 units for domestic consumers and decided to charge Rs 6.50 per unit against current Rs 6.40.
The DERC had abolished 201-400 units slabs while announcing 26 per cent hike in tariff in June. The decision to revert to original slabs will come into retrospective effect from July 1 when the hiked tariff came into force.
The abolition of the 201-400 had resulted in significant increase in tariff as a consumer was charged Rs 4.80 per unit if his consumption crossed 200 units.
In its June order, the DERC had fixed Rs 3.70 per unit for consumption between 0-200 units while Rs 4.80 per unit was fixed for the new slab of 0-400 units.
The DERC has now decided to charge Rs 5.50 per unit for consumption between 201-400 units.
"The Commission has observed that the proposed rationalisation would definitely benefit the consumers in the range of 200 to 400 units where the percentage increase in bills would come down on an average by 15 per cent," DERC Secretary Jayashree Raghuraman said.
Giving an example, she said the monthly bill of a consumer consuming 201 units as per existing rate would have been Rs 964.80 which will come down to Rs 745.50 following reintroduction of 201-400 slab which means a reduction of tariff by 22.73 per cent.
As per DERC calculation, the monthly bill for consumption of 400 units will come down by 4.17 per cent as the bill would be Rs 1840 instead of Rs 1920.