UPI Facility For All Payments To BESCOM Will Be Made Available Within 6 To 8 Months, Karnataka High Court Told

Bangalore Electricity Supply Company Limited (BESCOM) informed the Karnataka High Court on Friday that the facility of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) or Online payment in respect of all aspects of payment to be made to BESCOM will be made available in six to eight months.

The high court had in its July 26 order directed BESCOM to file an affidavit explaining why the facility of providing UPI/ online payment is not made available in respect of all aspects of payment to be made to it.

In view of this, an affidavit filed by Mahantesh Bilagi, BESCOM's Managing Director stated that the RAPDRP Scheme had been upgraded to IPDS Scheme (Integrated Power Developments Scheme) through development of software as well as hardware. The phase 1 of this project was completed in March 2024 and stabilised by the end of April 2024. Therefore, online payment facilities are not extended for non- fast track schemes in RAPDRP/IPDS areas.

The affidavit further said that all the new features and enhancements are being taken up in the upcoming phases of IPDS scheme and the facility of online payment for non-fast track services will be provided as part of these enhancements, within a period of 6-8 months.

A single judge bench of Justice N S Sanjay Gowda on perusal of the affidavit orally said, “Everybody's doing it immediately nowadays, does it require months for you to do? Temporarily something cannot be done, some facility. What you are saying is long term but why can't you do something temporarily.”

“Somebody wants to give you the money, the government is screaming from the rooftop that you should go digital and you want to go back to collect currency notes. Every grocer is now having a scanner before him and you cannot give him (petitioner) a QR code to make the payment. Court was the slowest in adopting technology and you are even worse than us," the court orally said. 

BESCOM General Manager IT Department, who appeared before the court, submitted that the scanner at counters can be provided through a tender process and it will take time.

Meanwhile advocate Anusha appearing for the petitioner sought time to file its reply to the objections filed by BESCOM. Allowing the same the high court posted the matter for further hearing on August 30.

The petitioner Seethalakshmi had approached the court seeking a direction to BESCOM to provide the Prepayment Meter as per section 47 (5) of the Electricity Act, 2003 and accept the payment in the UPI mode as provided for in the KERC Regulations.

BESCOM in its objections to the petition had claimed that she has filed three applications seeking additional load and not made payments and since last one year she is consuming zero units of power. Thus without meeting the requirement she has been filing one or more representations and petitions before the high court.

Case Title: SEETHALAKSHMI v. Bangalore Electricity Supply Company Limited.

Case No: WP 17053/2024

Appearance: Advocate Anusha D For petitioner.

Advocate Padma S Uttur for BESCOM.