Balasore, March 28: Balasore Municipality and other local civic authorities in the district may soon be slapped with disconnection of electricity for streetlights from the North Orissa Electricity Supply Company (Nesco) on account of non-payment of arrears of over Rs 12 crore.

Official sources said that the Balasore Municipality owes Rs 9 crore and the notified area councils (NACs) of Jaleswar, Nilgiri and Soro owe Rs 1 crore each to the power distribution company.

“We have orders to collect the arrears by the end of this month. Despite our repeated reminders to these civic authorities, we have not received any response from them. We will be forced to snap electricity supply if they do not pay their dues,” said Braja Sundar Parida, superintendent engineer of Nesco.

“For the Balasore Municipality, the electricity bill due is Rs 4.7 crore and the delay payment surcharge stands at another Rs 4 crore. We had requested the authorities to pay their dues by March 23 and later we extended the deadline till March 28. As they have not paid any attention to our requests, we will have to initiate action now,” Parida said.

On the other hand, the municipality’s chairperson Sujata Das said that that the arrears have been pending for more than 15 years. She also alleged that Nesco has unilaterally enhanced the load of the electricity connection from 275KW to 425KW and has been making bill accordingly for the last two months.

“We have been making partial payment of the dues every month. But, since the Nesco has arbitrarily enhanced the connected load, the regular part payment has been withheld,” said Sujata Das. “We would pay current dues as per the bill only after a joint verification of the connected load. For the arrears, we have sought government’s grant. The Nesco should keep public interest in view before resorting to any strict action,” she said.

Parida said that within a span of nearly two decades the load has increased several times due to addition of streetlights. “There are several high power streetlight points erected out of untied funds of elected representatives that consume huge amount of electricity. The connection load had to be increased,” he said.

“We had asked both the sides to settle the dispute over connected load issue after joint verification. We have also asked the the Notified Area Councils to pay their arrears,” said Sribatsa Jena, additional district magistrate .