Bihar State Electricity Board (BSEB) has faced the wrath of the comptroller and auditor general (CAG) for failing to recover Rs 5,700 crore outstanding dues.

“The outstanding dues of about Rs 5,700 crore is till March 2011. The state government also wrote off Rs 567 crore in the past five years although the government departments owe majority of the board’s dues,” R.B. Sinha, the principal accountant-general, Patna, said. Ajay Kumar and Atul Prakash, both deputy accountant-generals, made a presentation on commercial and revenue receipts reports, respectively. “The board, suffered revenue loss due to short/non-billing, incorrect application of tariff, wrong, categorisation of consumers among others,” the report said.

Deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi, who also holds the finance portfolio, tabled the CAG report at the Assembly and the Council on Monday. Of 28,140 villages in the state, power reached to just 20,000 under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY) in five years, Kumar said, adding that the board could provide connection to 18 lakh BPL families against its target of 27 lakh till September 2011. “We observed that 34,727 distribution transformers (DT) were installed under the RGGVY till April 2011, of which 3,038 transformers worth Rs 24.18 crore burnt within a year,” Kumar said.

Inordinate delay of 330 days over the stipulated period (of 145 days) in providing new connection resulted in a loss of Rs 10.78 crore, it said, adding that of 35 lakh consumers, 10.24 lakh consumers were un-metered while 1.28 lakh consumers were with defective meters.