Ghaziabad: Nearly 27 government departments in the city owe over Rs 7 crore to the electricity department, with the primary education department topping the list with Rs 2.5 crore as dues. According to officials, the dues are pending over many years now and repeated requests to pay the power bill arrears have gone waste. However, the department this time is determined to recover dues before Diwali and has requested all departments to pay up.“We are issuing fresh notices to about 27 government departments that have for years not cleared their power dues, and this time we hope to recover the same,” said RK Rana, chief engineer, Pashchimanchal Vidyut Vitaran Nigam (PVVNL). “The dues which include arrears and interest is now Rs 7.22 crore, with primary education department being the highest defaulter at Rs 2.60 crore, followed by police department at Rs 1.74 crore,” he added.The electricity department, in fact, few months ago had disconnected the power supply to a primary school but had to resume after intervention from the district administration.“The problem with the government departments is that like household customers, we have slew of options from disconnecting power lines but we possibly cannot do the same with these departments because of obvious reasons,” said a PVVNL official.Officials said there are about 38,000 defaulters whose power dues are more than Rs 10,000 in Ghaziabad city alone. In Ghaziabad zone, comprising Hapur, Bulandshahr and Ghaziabad, outstanding power dues are about Rs 698 crore, of which about 30% have been recovered but when it comes to government departments, not a single penny has been paid against power dues in many years.

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