Surprise checks? It is the raiding team that’s in for a surprise

The overhead main line, which according to the DVB sources comes off the MMTC feeder, is brazenly tapped by the residents of the unauthorised Nayi colony. It’s common to spot thick wires tied to bamboo poles snaking into several “factories”. On the ground floor are the furniture showrooms, and in the basement blocks of wood are cut, sliced and shaped by electric saws.

A maze of wires of all possible dimensions criss-cross the colony, belying the fact that the whole thing is done pretty systematically. Children are under standing orders not to fly kites in the area, so that nothing gets entangled in the wires, complicating matters. The residents even take care to suspend stones and bricks from the wires to prevent them from swaying in the wind and causing short circuits.

A little distance away from the mills, several workers sit motionless under the sun. “What’s the matter ?” asks their employer, getting out of his car. “No electricity. We cannot weld the gate together,” one of them answers, puffing peacefully on a beedi. No electricity, incidentally does not imply a power cut that others in the city suffer from time to time.

Rather, their `source’ in the DVB office has informed them of an impending DVB, obliging them to disconnect their overhead wires unceremoniously. After a while, a phone call declares `all clear’ and soon it’s business as usual. Says Salim, a 24-year-old unemployed youth who moonlights as a DVB `connection’: “Not all units work at the same time. Then there will be no light for the authorised colonies. The carpenters need natural light too. So they work during the day and the welders at night. The fabricators have to supply orders abroad on time so they work all the time.” It’s too bad if this puts too much load on the feeder lines and the transformers trip, plunging authorised colonies hooked to the line in darkness.

Salim is quite friendly with the local DVB men of course, and claims they not only provided the `clients’ with the raw material (wires etc.) but also rigged them up for them. “Of course all of us have to pay them regularly,” says Akram, a welder. “Rs 100 per house and Rs 400 per factory every month.” “If the residents of Sarvodaya Enclave, Malviya Nagar, Sarvapriya Vihar find their voltage fluctuate at night, they can safely assume that welding work is underway at the unauthorised colonies,” says a south circle DVB official. “And if the Adhchini transformer trips, cutting off the power supply to IIT, Safdarjung Development Area (SDA), Shivalik and the adjoining areas, they should know that some fabrication unit is working overtime,” he adds.

Why is the DVB doing nothing? “We cannot post a chowkidar there all the time. When the raid is over, the residents re-hook the lines,” laments the DVB spokes person Jagdish Kapoor. “But this time the chairman Virender Singh has given clear orders that if the theft is not checked and the situation here does not improve stern action would be taken against errant officials,” he says.

The irony of the matter is that even the residents of the unauthorised colonies put the blame at DVB’s doorstep. “We have paid them for regular metres but they are not installing them,” says Javed, a relatively well-to-do shop owner in the area. “They should charge us for the electricity, we are willing to pay and with that money they can buy more electricity. But the DVB officials do not want to lose their pocket money and create problems for regularisation of our electricity”.

The DVB enforcement wing its own tale to tell. “Municipal counsellors and members of legislative assembly (MLAs) order us not to cut electricity and threaten us with transfers for residents of unauthorised colonies are vote banks. Now residents of authorised colonies have to become vote banks against such politicians and then the power theft menace can be curbed,” says an official.