BEST and Reliance crack down on power theft at Ganpati mandals

Row of lights and glittering decoration at Ganpati mandals add to the festive mood. But all the ambience comes at a cost. This spiked power consumption is not the only concern for power distributors of Mumbai. Electricity theft is a bigger issue that they face.

Between Colaba-Mahim/Sion, this year, 1,354 Ganpati mandals have applied for electricity connections with the Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) Undertaking. Last year, 1,511 mandals applied for electricity connection. “There has been a drop in the mandals who came to procure temporary power supply,” said a BEST official. The BEST officials expect around 5-6 Mw of additional load each day due to these power guzzling mandals.

In the suburbs, Reliance Infrastructure has received 1,069 applications from Ganpati mandals which stood at 956 mandals applications last year. “We expect around 8-9 Mw of powerload on the system,” said an official from Rinfra.

Sources said that theft is a big issue and so thorough checks are done before the supply is given.

Both BEST and Rinfra stated that their vigilance team has been instructed to carry out surprise checks at these mandals. “There are cases where the mandals take power from the feeder boxes (red-coloured box seen on road) which leads …read more