‘ ₹210,42,08,405’: Himachal Pradesh businessman gets whopping electricity bill

‘ ₹210,42,08,405’: Himachal Pradesh businessman gets whopping electricity bill

₹210,42,08,405’: Himachal Pradesh businessman gets whopping electricity bill ByHT News Desk, New Delhi Jan 10, 2025 11:53 AM IST Share Via Copy Link According to officials, a ‘technical glitch’ led to the bill amount, which was later rectified to ₹4,047.

A man in Himachal Pradesh's Hamirpur district was taken aback after he reportedly received an electricity bill of more than ₹2 billion ( ₹200 crore).

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NDTV reported that Lalit Dhiman, a businessman from the Beherwin Jattan village, received a bill amounting to ₹210,42,08,405 crore for December 2024, while he paid only ₹2,500 for the previous month.

Dhiman went to the electricity board to complain and was told by the officials that a “technical glitch” was behind the high electricity bill, which was rectified and brought down to ₹4,047, the report noted.

A similar incident occurred in Gujarat's Valsad in November last year. Muslim Ansari, a tailor, reportedly got a bill asking for payment of ₹86.41 lakh.

Ansari, whose shop in the Chor Gali of Valsad gets its power from the state-owned Dakshin Gujarat Vij Company Limited, which has more than 32 lakh consumers spread across seven districts in south Gujarat, brought the massive amount to the officials' attention.

Upon inspection, the authorities had found that two digits – 1 and 0 – were “mistakenly” added to the metre reading and this led to the huge bill amount, which was then corrected to ₹1,540.

“There was a mistake. The person who took the meter reading added the digits 1and 0 to the meter reading. We have now given a revised amount,” Hitesh Patel, an employee of the power distribution company, said at the time.

According to Ansari, the electricity bill of his shop was almost always less than ₹2,000.