Thane: The strict vigilance against power thefts and enforcement of civic rules has resulted in a negligible number of cases of illegal sourcing of electricity by Ganpati mandals.Of the 220 Ganpati mandals visited by officials of MSEDCL, only one was found to have tampered with the connections for sourcing power without authorisation during the festival.MSEDCL officials inspected pandals in Thane, Mumbra and Kalwa areas which had taken temporary power connections during the Ganesh festival.“During the festival we come across only one pandal from Thane-II division which was sourcing power directly from a distribution box. The mandal was asked to pay a fine of Rs 3,791 for the offence. The pandal was also given a temporary connection till the end of the festivities. Due to discounts provided by the power department most of the pandals had utilised the facility. Even last year there were no power thefts reported on account of this,” said an official from MSEDCL.An all-women squad, Damini, was specially appointed to check for any tampering and every division has one squad to keep a tab on the power thefts.The civic authorities said that during the festival inspections were carried out almost on a daily basis and it continued till the end of the festival.“Along with the Damini Squad, even the Assistant Engineer Quality Control (AEQC) had kept a tab to check if there were power theft incidents. Action was to be taken against the violators immediately. Also, the mandal found violating the rule was asked to pay the fine as per utilisation of power. They are then even given a temporary connection,” said Rajesh Thool, executive engineer at MSEDCL.While last year the state power department had not come across any pandals taking illegal connections, in 2017 they had taken action against 11 mandals who were charged a fine of Rs 80,020.The department had offered the temporary connections to pandals at a discounted rate of Rs 4.38 per unit a flat rate which did not increase after 100 units. This is usually in the case of residential or commercial connections.The mandals were not charged commercial rates of around Rs 7.28 per unit.

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