Aadhaar-EB connection linking deadline extended to Feb 15

CHENNAI: Electricity Minister V Senthilbalaji on Tuesday announced that 25 lakh consumers who have not linked their Aadhaar with service connection numbers should do so by February 15 after which no further extension would be provided.

Speaking to reporters, he said as of Tuesday morning, 2.42 crore consumers out of the total 2.67 crore have linked their Aadhaar in the last 78 days.

The state government had mandated the linking of Aadhaar with service connections of Domestic, huts, agricultural, handloom and power loom categories to continue to get the government subsidy.

He said that out of the 2.33 crore domestic consumers, 2.17 crore consumers have linked their Aadhaar. Similarly, 70,000 out of the 74,000 handloom consumers and 1.54 lakh out of the 1.63 lakh power loom consumers have linked their Aadhaar. He said that there is a large pendency among the huts consumers to link their Aadhaar with 4.33 lakh out of the 9.44 lakh yet to do so. He said that nearly five lakh agricultural consumers out of 23.28 lakh are yet to link.

He said that to complete the Aadhaar linking process, the officials were instructed to go door-to-door in the huts to link. "In the agricultural and domestic categories, consumers inheriting ancestral properties have multiple owners and they are facing issues over linking their Aadhaar.In such cases, we are planning to allow multiple consumers to link their Aadhaar, " he said.

In the case of the companies or trusts owned properties, the person in charge of it could link their Aadhaar, he added.

On the pending electricity bills of the government departments, he said that as much as Rs 4,500 crore dues of various government departments including local bodies are pending. "We have taken up the issue with the chief minister. The finance department has issued orders to pay the dues in a phased manner, " he said.