AGARTALA, May 19 (TIWN): Fifty percent of the consumers are not paying their electricity bills and the number of illegal hook line users in the state are increasing day by day.Talking to TIWN on Monday over telephone TSECL Chairman cum Managing Director (CMD) S K Roy said that around 50 percent of the consumers are not paying their electricity bills. As a result "TSECL has to face huge hurdles because it has to buy power”, he added.On being asked about the frequent load shading issue, SK Roy said power supply in the state stands at 230 MW against 250 MW pick-hour demand leading a gap of around 20 MW. “Sometimes, we go for power cut that too for very less period”, he claimed. As of now, TSECL’s pending bill stands at Rs. 90 crore which appears a major bottleneck for the corporation's better revenue collection. Of the total pending bill, the share of government departments is higher than that of private parties.Recently a review meeting on power sector was held at Prajna Bhavan chaired by Power Minister Manik Dey.

Secretary S K Prakash and the CMD of TSECL were present in the meeting. In the meeting, all the officials of TSECL were asked to focus on providing better power supply to the consumers and better realization of revenue collection.

"In the meeting, it was decided that action will be taken against those officials who found fault in carrying out proper duty", said SK Roy.