Consumer is King » Delhi

Penalties on electricity discoms in Delhi for failures proposed to be increased massively

ashish — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:26:51 +0000

Delhi used to suffer under bad quality of service from the earlier Government controlled DESU. So, when privatization of power supply in Delhi happened and the city was broken up into several zones, customers were happy with the hope that they will get more regular power for longer hours, less breakdowns, better customer service and other such improvements. Overall, while the condition is better than the time under DESU, there has not been the level of improvement that one would have expected from the entry of private discoms. People still suffer from power breakdowns, from bad customer service (including people not picking up the phone when the power goes down or lines not available, inflated bills, burnt meters not getting replaced early enough, and other such problems).
There have been numerous complaints over the years, but they do not seem to have really made matters better, with the Chief Minister also publicly criticizing some of these corporations for the bad level of service; but this is also true because the cost of not making things better is not much – so the penalties are not often applied, and even when applied, the penalties really do not cause the discoms much harm. A new proposal aims to increase the level of penalties and ensure that the cost that the discoms would be willing to take by continuing to offer bad quality increases considerably (link to article):

In a few weeks, discoms will have to pay the price for every deficiency in service. On Wednesday, power regulator Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) held a public hearing on its proposal to hike the penalty amount payable by discoms as suo motu compensation if they fail to pay the original penalty for deficiency in service. All the penalty amounts under the performance standard regulations may also be doubled. Sources said the new penalty amounts will be effected in another month.
If the discoms does not pay the compensation suo motu, then the consumer will have to be paid compensation which is five times the original amount,” said a DERC official. The draft also proposed that all consumer complaints that were made using any medium — telephone, SMS or even in writing had to be routed through a call centre, a unique compliant number and a permanent record of the complaint had to be made. The discoms have been asked to ensure that they run call centres with sufficient number of officials or employees for effective complaint handling.

This seems to be a good effort, but only if it is carried through and discoms have to pay penalty at a level that bites them.

Delhi University cut-off list -the first list, released on June 25, 2009

ashish — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:40:08 +0000

The first cut-off list for Admissions to 2009 Under-Graduate course have been released, and here are links to the list:

Art and Commerce Cut off (link to list)

Science cut off (link to list)

Admission lists for SC/ST/PH candidates at the following location (link to list page)

Dates for collection of admission slips, and for depositing fees:

Collection of Admission Slip from Arts faculty (North Campus) 25th, 26th, 27th and 29th of June 2009 between 10 AM to 1PM (Excluding Sunday)

Payment of fees in the college : 26th, 27th and 29th of June 2009

A website catering to Delhi University (DUspecial.in)

List of colleges that are part of Delhi University

ashish — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:55:33 +0000

There are a total of 83 such colleges, and this list is not supposed to include private colleges, so if you see a college stating that it is part of Delhi University, this list is a good reference point. The naming of this list is alphabetical, and is not an indicator of the ranking of the college.

1. Acharya Narendra Dev College
2. Aditi Mahavidyalaya
3. Ahilyabai College of Nursing
4. Amar Jyoti Institute of Physiotherapy
5. Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College
6. Ayurvedic & Unani Tibbia College
7. Bhagini Nivedita College
8. Bharati College
9. Bhaskaracharya College of Applied Sciences
10. Bhim Rao Ambedkar College
11. College of Arts
12. College of Vocational Studies
13. Daulat Ram College
14. Deen Dayal Upadhyaya College
15. Delhi College of Arts & Commerce
16. Delhi College of Engineering
17. Delhi Institute of Pharmaceutical Sci & Research
18. Deshbandhu College
19. Deshbandhu College (Evening)
20. Durgabai Deshmukh College of Special Education (Visual Impairment)
21. Dyal Singh College
22. Dyal Singh College (Evening)
23. Gargi College
24. Hans Raj College
25. Hindu College
26. Indira Gandhi Instt.of Phy. Edu. & Sports Sciences
27. Indraprastha College for Women
28. Institute of Home Economics
29. Janki Devi Memorial College
30. Jesus & Mary College
31. Kalindi College
32. Kamla Nehru College
33. Keshav Mahavidyalaya
34. Kirori Mal College
35. Lady Harding Medical College
36. Lady Irwin College
37. Lady Shri Ram College for Women
38. Lakshmi Bai College
39. Maharaja Agrasen College
40. Maharishi Valmiki College of Education
41. Maitreyi College
42. Mata Sundri College for Women
43. Maulana Azad Medical College
44. Miranda House College
45. Moti Lal Nehru College
46. Moti Lal Nehru College (Evening)
47. Nehru Homeopathic College
48. Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology
49. P.G.D.A.V. College
50. P.G.D.A.V. College (Evening)
51. Pt. Deen Dayal Institute – Physically Handicapped
52. Rajdhani College
53. Rajkumari Amrit Kaur College of Nursing
54. Ram Lal Anand College
55. Ram Lal Anand College (Evening)
56. Ramjas College
57. Satyawati College
58. Satyawati College (Evening)
59. School of Open Learning
60. School of Rehabilitation Sciences
61. Shaheed Bhagat Singh College
62. Shaheed Bhagat Singh College (Evening)
63. Shaheed Rajguru College of App.Sci. for Women
64. Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies
65. Sherubtse College
66. Shivaji College
67. Shri Ram College of Commerce
68. Shyam Lal College
69. Shyam Lal College (Evening)
70. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee College
71. Sri Aurbindo College
72. Sri Aurbindo College (Evening)
73. Sri Guru Gobind Singh College of Commerce
74. Sri Guru Nanak Dev Khalsa College
75. Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Khalsa College
76. Sri Venkateswara College
77. St. Stephen’s College
78. Swami Shraddhanand College
79. University College of Med. Sc. And G.T.B. Hospital
80. Vallabhbhai Patel Chest Institute
81. Vivekanand College
82. Zakir Husain College
83. Zakir Husain College (Evening)

Delhi High criticizes sadistic behaviour of DDA

ashish — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 08:52:14 +0000

Citizens of the country have mostly bad thoughts about interacting with Government bodies; a lot of them come across officialdom who are not responsive and caring about their needs (as an example, making them come repeatedly even for small errors in the red tape process), and so on. There are babus (officials), who are friendly, but most are like hard faced officials, unwilling to come across as caring people. It would be nice for people to live in a gated community (and self-sufficient place) where one would not have to interact with the Government bureaucracy, but that is living in an ideal world. However, there are cases when official responses are such that you would be horrified to read about such cases, and wonder as to how the official structure of the country could be so insensitive to the problems faced by citizens, that too when the situation is due to a fault of the agency themselves. The Delhi Development Authority however has been roundly criticized from time to time over its openness, caring nature (lack of it), and inability to care about what citizens go through. Read this article for more information:

Wondering if DDA derives “some kind of sadistic pleasure” in harassing citizens, Delhi High Court has slammed the civic agency in a case of double allotment of a flat in 1991 due to which the rightful owner was deprived of its possession and had to wage a 17 year legal battle in court.
“Ignoring dictum of law the officials of DDA keep perpetuating their illegal acts giving an impression as if they derive some kind of sadistic pleasure to harass the citizens,” HC observed while castigating the civic body for having the nerve to demand double the price of a flat which wasn’t handed over to Gandhi in 1991 because of DDA’s double allotment mistake.

This case really highlights as to how uncaring an agency can be. DDA double-allotted a flat in 1991, and when the lady in question tried to get the mistake corrected, the DDA did a fresh allotment to her after 10 years and charged her new prices, at double the original cost. In such cases, the Court should also assign individual responsibility and fine officials responsible (including fining officials of the rank of Chairman and Vice-Chairman if they had made such recommendations).