Power pilferage in 33 houses

Lucknow: In response to frequent power supply breakdowns caused by overloading and resulting in short circuits, the Lucknow Electricity Supply Administration (Lesa) conducted raids in many parts of the city on Wednesday and detected power pilferage in 33 houses.The raids were conducted in Deen Dayal Nagar, Murai Tola area of trans-Gomti area and in Gola Sadar Bazaar, Mall avenue, Subhani Kheda of cis-Gomti areas.In Khadra, Lesa team took the help of local police while disconnecting power supply of households which had bypassed the meter to use power to run air conditioners.Anil Tiwari, Lesa trans-areas chief said, “The team caught 60KW of power pilferage in 19 households, with one of the defaulters using 10KW of power after bypassing the meter to run a heavy duty machine in his small scale shoe factory. The team also caught nine ACs in households which were running with illegal power supple.“After the raid, power supply in the area improved and no overloading was reported till evening,” he added.FIRs were lodged against 21households based on the complaint of executive engineer AK Rai of the area.Meanwhile, Lesa caught 12 households in power theft.