Uttar Pradesh’s PVVNL engineer advises juniors to set ablaze houses of power bill defaulters, suspended | Lucknow News
A superintending engineer with the Saharanpur unit of the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation was suspended on Wednesday after video clip showed him directing his subordinates to set ablaze the houses of electricity bill defaulters.
The Meerut-headquartered Paschimanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Limited (PVVNL) took action against Dheeraj Kumar Jaiswal after a probe confirmed the officer’s statement during the virtual meet to be true.
According to officials, Jaiswal gave the alleged instruction on Tuesday during an official virtual conference when his juniors informed him that houses of many defaulters were found to be locked when the PVVNL teams reached for collecting the pending bills.
Isha Duhan, PVVNL Managing Director, asserted that Jaiswal’s suspension is a lesson for others “to mend their ways”.
“I have reminded my junior and senior officers that under no circumstances power consumers should be dealt either with indecent behavior or be addressed with disrespectful language,” Duhan said.
Sanjeev Mohan Garg, Director (Personnel and Administration), said that action was taken against the officer “for giving a shameful advice to his juniors when they lodged complaint that consumers have locked their house”.
The department has issued strict directives to all higher and junior staff against using improper language against consumers, he added.
In his defence, Jaiswal told reporters that it was only a slip of the tongue and that the 30-second video clip carved out from a four-hour virtual meet has been leaked by a group of junior engineers who never go for realization of pending dues.
“What happened was only a slip of tongue when I was explaining to them that the revenue they bring from consumers is our livelihood and they should accord top priority to the revenue collection,” he claimed.
