The Nitish government came to power on the promise to brighten up the state within six months, but more than six years later the situation has turned from bad to worse with the BSEB becoming an agency to shield the big electricity thieves close to powers that be and instead nab the petty ones on one pretext or the other. According to one estimate thousands of crores have been lost in the process.

The Bihar government formulated its State Litigation Policy in April 2011 which sets down the following objective criteria for filing a Special Leave Petition in Supreme Court: 1) Where issues related to public finance are involved; 2) Where substantial questions of law are involved; 3) Where the High Court has exceeded its jurisdiction and finally 4) Where the High Court has struck down a statutory provision etc.

Yet the state government, according to sources, has violated its own Litigation Policy when the Patna High Court recently quashed the two FIRs lodged by Vigilance Cell of the BSEB in 2008 and 2009 against Dadiji Steel Ltd, a leading firm, and the then Chairman of BSEB respectively.

The Court ruled that the police were not empowered to institute cases under Electricity Act 2003 though in one case alone close to Rs 20 crores of public money was involved.

Besides, sources said several hundreds of crores may be involved in dozens of cases of power theft which are under investigation and the government may be forced to close them as well in the light of the judgment of the High Court.

Though the High Court ruling involves both public finance and a question of law yet the government has not filed an appeal in the Supreme Court. As a result 52 other voluntary declarations are likely to remain un-investigated.

According to the latest issue of Bureaucracy Today “The voluntary declaration itself may have put the BSEB to a possible loss of Rs 600 crore...This value of Rs 600 crore is speculative, because the Chairman, and underlings, refused to part with any papers, hence effectively stopping the investigation in its tracks.”

Needless to say, consuming electricity through a tampered metre is a criminal offence entailing a punishment of up to three years rigorous imprisonment and a punitive billing which may be up to six times the actual bill. But if a consumer makes a voluntary declaration under Clause 11.4 of the Bihar Electricity Supply Code 2007 that his/her metre is being tampered then the BSEB replaces the metre, and s/he is let off with an average billing for the last three months in case of domestic consumers and six months of average billing and no criminal proceedings will follow after that.

It needs to be recalled that the Vigilance Cell of the BSEB launched an intensive drive during the tenure of DG Anand Shankar to check theft of power by big consumers during the months of March and April 2008. Among others case was registered against Dadiji Steel Limited for theft of electricity. A punitive bill of Rs 20 crores was slapped.

 What followed is something very strange. The then Chairman of the Board Swapan Mukherjee accepted the voluntary declaration of Dadiji Steel Limited about two months after Vigilance had caught it red-handed and raised a bill for Rs 1,19,91,755.00 on July 9, 2008 under Clause 11.4 of the Supply Code. All this when there was no scope for it in this case.

Meanwhile, Anand Shankar was transferred and Manoje Nath replaced him. The Chairman, on being countered by the Vigilance, that the voluntary declaration was illegal in this case admitted that he was not aware of Vigilance action. Voluntary declaration was not admissible to someone who had been raided still he refused to realise Rs 20 crores.

The then principal secretary of the department also lent his support to the Vigilance view. But still a bill for the remaining Rs 20 crores was not raised or realised from Dadiji Steel.

Vigilance registered a second case under Section 13 (1) D of the Prevention of Corruption Act against the Chairman for causing a pecuniary advantage of about Rs 20 crores to the Dadiji Steel Limited.

Not only that, to avoid raids 53 big industrialists responded to the advertisement published by the BSEB to declare that their metres are being tampered. Some of them had been caught stealing electricity worth Rs 80 and 70 crores in the past. Yet they also got their tampered metre replaced after paying a minimal amount. The Vigilance could not make much headway because the Board not only refused to co-operate it took a U-turn and made common cause with Dadiji whom it was prosecuting earlier.

 Ironically, this offer was not made to a single common domestic consumer by BSEB, whose officials lodged 250 FIRs in 2008, in Patna alone. They realized Rs 1.68 crores as punitive fines and sent to jail dozens of them for the theft of as little as Rs 6,000. This notwithstanding the fact that it is the discretion of the BSEB either to send power thieves to jail over and above a punitive fine, or to grant them amnesty under Clause 11.4.

The Nitish government refused to heed to the pleas of the DG to remove the Chairman. Instead it removed the DG (Electricity Vigilance) Manoje Nath within six months leaving the Board to conduct the case to its advantage.

According to Bureaucracy Today highly placed officers like the former Chief Secretary, Additional Director General of Vigilance Bureau and the Inspector General lent a helping hand to weaken the case of the state.

While the big fish is being let off, sources said, that common citizens will have to bear the brunt of unpaid power bill worth Rs 2500 crores. This loss is euphemistically called transmission loss which runs to 44 per cent.

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