Farmer gets electricity bill of over ₹3 crore for 2 months. This followed

A farmer in Rajasthan got a bill of ₹3.71 crore for consuming 38,514,098 units of electricity in two months. Upon checking, it was found that the meter reading and his original bill amount got swapped in the form.

The bill was issued on August 22 and the last date of payment was September 3 but the farmer got the shock of his life when he looked at the amount and ran to the nearest e-mitra centre, the Rajasthan government e-governance centres, with the bill in hand.

Pemaram Patel, 22, of Gingla village in Udaipur, 65km from Udaipur, owns a shop which he has rented out to someone who runs an auto service centre in it. The bill is for this shop which has an electricity connection from Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Limited (Ajmer Discom).

“When I went to the e-mitra, I found out that the bill was exorbitantly high because of a printing mistake. The actual bill was for ₹6,414, which I paid from the e-mitra itself,” said the farmer.

Superintending engineer Girish Joshi said the operator who records meter readings mistakenly keyed in meter number in the column for reading. “Correction was done immediately and a new copy of the bill with the correct amount was given to the consumer,” he added.

The bill is circulating on social media in the area and is talk of the town.