Delay in reading meters has left several power consumers in Patna worried.

They fear more than usual monthly load of energy consumption, which they would have to pay once the meter reading is done, and bill generated accordingly. Normally, meter reading in urban areas is done in the first fortnight of every month and bills are generated accordingly.

"They had last generated a bill on March 4 but since then no reading has been taken. Even if they take a meter reading now, this would be for a period of around 50 days and I would end up paying more than the usual sum towards my monthly electricity bill. This would certainly hit my monthly budget," said Satendra Kumar, a resident of Ramnagri in west Patna who runs a small grocery shop.

Same is the case with S.K. Singh, a resident of Khajpura, who earns his livelihood by imparting private tuitions to school students. "People like us, who have a limited income, feel the pinch if expenditure in any head goes up drastically in a given month. I am waiting for the reader to visit my place as a delay in meter reading would force me to pay accumulated bill," said the tutor.

Power company officials, however, said this was a one-off problem and residents should not worry because things would be regularised from May. "Several changes had to be introduced in the billing software owing to change in the tariff from April 1 and also the way the government subsidy was paid to the power company. Also, under the new system, which came into effect from April 1, the concept of fixed charge has been done away with in addition to other technical changes in the billing system. It took us around a fortnight to bring in the necessary changes in the software and test them properly to ensure error-free bills. This led to a delay of about a fortnight in reading meters and subsequent bill-generation process. The process has been streamlined and urban consumers of main towns would start getting bills," Bihar State Power Holding Company director (human resources and administration) R. Lakshmanan said on Tuesday.

Unlike in the past, when power companies used to get the tariff order from the Bihar electricity regulatory commission in the first week of March this year, the tariff order was issued on March 24.

In addition to this, the state government announced the subsidy it would give to the power company on March 31 with a directive of doing away with the past practice when the subsidy amount given to individual customers was not mentioned in the bill. Now this amount, which would be deducted from the sum to be paid by a customer, has to be mentioned in the bill.

Normally, after tariff revision, the software upgrade work used to take around 10 days. Since this year, apart from the change in tariff, other changes too were brought in, it took around a fortnight for the power companies to introduce necessary changes in the software and meter-reading work started on April 15.