Punjab Govt Announces Relief For Power Consumers Facing Inflated Bills

Punjab Power Minister Tarunpreet Singh Sond on Tuesday said no eligible consumer will lose the benefit of 300 free units of electricity due to provisional, erroneous or inflated bills.

He said the free-power benefit would be protected for 63,702 consumers affected by provisional billing during the meter readers' strike, while every genuine complaint regarding an incorrectly inflated bill would be resolved within two weeks.

A dedicated helpline will also be issued shortly, with a special team of 20 personnel already deployed at headquarters to deal with billing-related grievances, he said.

No eligible family will lose its 300-unit free electricity benefit merely because of a technical, provisional or billing-related error. Our priority is to ensure that every genuine case is corrected promptly, transparently and fairly, he said here.

Instances of provisional billing had arisen in certain cases between April and July, when regular meter readings could not be obtained in time due to the strike by meter readers.

"In such cases, bills were generated on the basis of previous average consumption and were to be reconciled once the actual meter reading became available," he added.

He clarified that eligible domestic consumers affected by such provisional billing would continue to receive the benefit of 300 units of free electricity per month, subject to the applicable eligibility conditions.

A special measure had been undertaken to protect the benefit of eligible consumers affected by provisional-billing-related adjustments. "Out of a total of 78 lakh consumers, only 63,702 consumers received provisional bills for three months," he added.

Billing-related difficulties arose primarily from two developments in 2026. In January, PSPCL transitioned from the earlier SAP and Non-SAP billing arrangements to the unified Single Billing System. The transition involved migration and integration of a very large volume of consumer and billing data.

During this process, certain data migration and software-related issues were encountered, and in some cases, previous meter reading data was not correctly available in the new system, resulting in errors in the calculation of consumption, the minister said.

The second issue related to the April-July 2026 meter readers' strike, during which a large number of consumers received provisional bills based on their previous average consumption, he said.