According to a special audit report prepared by the city municipal corporation on the consumer department of the undertaking, most of these consumers have been paying BEST a minimal amount ranging from Rs 25-75 for the last three years resulting in a huge loss of revenue for the cash-strapped undertaking. Over 25,800 meters exist in the city which show the same reading month after month and 9000 odd meters fail to read beyond the minimum amount of electricity. Over half of these consumers used the `cheap' power to run commercial spaces.

The report, prepared by Municipal Chief Auditor P C Pisolkar, says that the some of the meters which were installed 15-20 years ago, have not been replaced, though they have a life spanof just 10 years. This, in spite of the fact that the undertaking has a substantial stock of new meters in the Metre & Relay Department. BEST had bought 36,000 meters in 1996 to replace old and defective meters.

Similarly more than 13,500 consumers were not sent bills because their meters were either not on the board and could not be found. Even though the audit department had pointed out 33 such specific cases even earlier, they have not been issued the bills for the last five years.

The report has warned that recovery of the amount by the undertaking would be extremely difficult due to the poor efforts made by its officers so far. In a recent judgement, the report said, the Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum had said the issuance of corrected bills after a period of six months on account of defective meters would be held illegal.

Giving specific incidences, the report mentioned Hotel Arya Niwas in C ward, which had refused to pay an amended bill of Rs 3.45 lakh for the period between July 19,1991-April 4, 1993. Meanwhile, another meter which was installed at the hotel on October 10 two years ago had stopped reading from the day of installation.

In another case, a branch of the Central Bank of India had agreed to pay a revised charge of Rs 2.01 lakh after their defective meter was repaired but have not received the bill even after six years. The meter at the branch had shown a very low reading for over a year between 1991-92, resulting in the confusion.If the negligence of the BEST administration had a lot to contribute to the loss of revenue, an overzealous engineer proved to be a liability in his own way. The report has accused a deputy chief engineer of giving directions in March last year, cancelling the legitimate revision of charges, due to change in tariff rates, by fixing a ceiling of 500 units of average monthly consumption.

Thus 2839 claims aggregating to Rs 2.28 crore were cancelled without the sanction of either the general manager Vinay Mohan Lal or the BEST Committee. Though boththese authorities were intimated of this incidents 16 months ago, no action has been initiated against the engineer so far, the report claimed.