A government nursing school has been served a power disconnection notice for failing to pay electricity bills.

The Lady Health Visitor School of Nursing which runs under Patna City's Guru Gobind Singh Hospital is yet to pay Rs 1.78 crore as pending electricity bills of the last five years (approximately).

The Patna City division of Patna Electric Supply Undertaking (Pesu) has warned the nursing college authorities that if it fails to pay the pending bill by March 31, it would be forced to snap connection.

On Saturday, the Patna City division of Pesu had cut the power connection of the nursing school-cum-hostel. Around 150 students of the auxiliary nurse midwife (ANM) course who reside on the campus (the hostel runs from the school building) endured the misery for around nine hours. It was only after the nursing school authority wrote a letter to Pesu seeking restoration of electricity that the connection was restored.

Sources said this was not the first time Pesu disconnected power supply to the nursing college. Last year in March, the same situation had arisen.

The superintendent of Lady Health Visitor School of Nursing, Mukesh Kumar, said the reason for the huge bill was that the college was getting very less funds against its requisition. "Whatever money we received under the power head from health department was paid to Pesu. We were never provided funds by the health department as per requisition. As we got less funds, we always paid less than the actual amount. Hence the huge bill," said Mukesh.

He said the nursing college received Rs 4 lakh under the power head on Monday, which will be paid to Pesu. "Even after this payment, there would be huge dues. Today, we have written another letter to the health department seeking more funds," added Mukesh.

The executive engineer of Pesu's Patna City division, Sandeep Prakash, however, maintained that Pesu was supposed to get Rs 2.53 crore pending electricity bill and not Rs 1.78 crore.

"The Lady Health Visitor School of Nursing runs under the Guru Gobind Singh Hospital. The joint bill of the hospital and nursing school stands at around Rs 2.53 crore. We are supposed to get this amount by March 31 otherwise we will snap the connection of the nursing school. We have received directions from superiors that we cannot disconnect supply to hospitals. That's why we did not disconnect the supply to the hospital but that does not mean that we will get only the pending bill of the nursing school in the timeframe (March 31)," he said.

Students of the nursing school, however, blamed the college authorities that they always took them for granted.

"We have doubts over whether the college authorities send the requisition on time. We feel so because of the condition of the school-cum-hostel. Often there is a water supply problem. We have to source water from the lone hand-pump which is situated on the ground floor. The bathrooms here are always stinking. The sweeper is not called on a regular basis. How can we trust our authorities that they sent the requisition on time?" said a student.