File photo of a special camp for customers organized by Tangedco to link Aadhaar numbers with their electricity connections, in Tiruchy. , Photo Credit: M.Murthy
The Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation (TANGEDCO) has launched a door-to-door survey in Tiruchy to link the Aadhaar numbers of residents with their electricity consumer accounts.
Tangedco initiated the move in November and Power Minister V. Senthilbalaji specified December 31 as the deadline for making linkages to consumers. To facilitate the linkage, Tangedco set up special camps at all its section offices. However, Tangedco could manage to bring only around 60% of consumers under the scheme till December. After this, the corporation extended the deadline to January 31.
According to sources, the Tiruchi Metro circle, which includes Tiruchi city, Thuraiyur, Manapparai, Musiri, Lalgudi and Srirangam divisions, has around 15 lakh electricity services. Out of them, about eight lakh consumers have done the linkage, while about seven lakh consumers are yet to complete the process.
To bring more and more consumers under the linkage scheme, field level functionaries and officials of TANGEDCO have started visiting each and every household in their respective sections. The campaign is taking place in 96 sections of the Tiruchi Metro circle. All foremen, linemen, commercial assistants and commercial inspectors are involved in this process.
Apart from attending to their day-to-day work, they visit houses in their sections. They collect Bijli and Aadhaar numbers of all the households and after returning to their offices start the linkage process.
“We meet so many tenants during our visits to homes. We ask them for Aadhaar number as they have the option to enter it under tenant category. But many of them say they need to take permission from their landlords,” says a senior official involved in the campaign.
Assistant Executive Engineer and Executive Engineer level officers have been asked to monitor the campaign and update the linkage coverage on a daily basis to their superiors. It is being reviewed on a daily basis at the senior level.
“We have seen a good response from consumers initially. We covered the first 25% within two weeks and took over a month to push the coverage beyond 50%. Progress is now only one percent a day. It will take a few more days to study the response to the door-to-door drive,” said another official.