Massive Power Bills, Broken Meters: How Vidarbha’s Grid Is Failing Locals

thenewsdirt
Aug 5
14 min read

In a small village in Vidarbha, a simple envelope containing an electricity bill has become a source of dread. Over the past few years, thousands of ordinary electricity consumers in this region of Maharashtra have been grappling with faulty electric meters, devices that should measure power usage accurately but instead have delivered inexplicably high bills, abrupt disconnections, and endless frustration.

In July 2025, farmers in Kelwad village near Nagpur were stunned when new “smart” meters installed at their homes produced power bills running into lakhs of rupees.

One cultivator, Venkati Gohatre, opened his bill to find a staggering ₹2.39 lakh charge, dozens of times higher than his typical monthly dues. Another farmer, Shankar Bhangde, was billed ₹1.34 lakh for the same cycle. Such incidents are not isolated. They highlight a much broader problem of malfunctioning electricity meters across Vidarbha and the heavy price being paid by the common man.

Widespread Faulty Meters Burden Consumers

Official data have exposed how extensive the issue is. In mid-2023, a report by the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Co. Ltd (MSEDCL), the public utility serving the region, revealed that 9.6 lakh electricity meters across the state were not functioning properly.

This alarming figure includes a large share in eastern Maharashtra, and Vidarbha was particularly affected.

In the Nagpur division alone, around 2.25 lakh meters were identified as faulty, with tens of thousands more defective units in districts like Amravati (80,000), Akola (78,000), Chandrapur (29,000) and Gondia (12,000).

Each of these “faulty” meters represents a household or shop potentially being inaccurately billed.

Crucially, it is the ordinary customers who suffer most from these defects. When an electricity meter slows down or stops working, MSEDCL typically issues bills based on average estimated usage rather than actual consumption.

Those estimates tend to overshoot what people really use. Consumers often receive inflated bills that don’t match their usage patterns, and any excess amount paid isn’t reliably adjusted later, even if the meter error is discovered. In effect, a malfunctioning meter can turn a frugal family’s monthly bill into an exorbitant charge.

MSEDCL’s own practices have compounded the burden. The utility has been slow to replace defective meters, largely due to a shortage of new units in inventory.

Some customers in Vidarbha have waited months for the company to swap out a dead meter, all the while being charged on rough estimates that run high. In desperation, many consumers have resorted to buying meters on the black market at double the normal price just to get a functional device faster.

This kind of out-of-pocket expense, essentially paying for equipment that the electricity company is supposed to provide, hits lower-income and rural households especially hard.

To understand the everyday impact of these problems, consider the key issues faced by consumers due to faulty or inaccurate meters:

Skyrocketing Bills: Families receive unexpectedly high electricity bills far beyond their actual consumption, straining household budgets.
Estimated Charges: When meters fail, MSEDCL applies “average” billing that often overshoots real usage, effectively overcharging the consumer.
Delayed Replacements: Defective meters aren’t replaced promptly, sometimes for months, prolonging the period of inaccurate billing.
Extra Costs to Consumers: Some customers end up buying new meters themselves at high cost due to MSEDCL’s supply shortages, an expense many can ill afford.
Risk of Disconnection: Billing disputes and errors can lead to power disconnections without proper notice, leaving vulnerable consumers in darkness until issues are resolved.

These challenges have turned a basic public utility into a source of anxiety. For many people in Vidarbha, what should be a straightforward monthly routine, checking the electric meter and paying the bill, has become an unpredictable ordeal.

Ordinary Citizens Face Shocking Bills and Struggles

The statistics on paper translate into real-life ordeals for Vidarbha’s residents. The incident in Kelwad village is a prime example of how faulty meter readings can upend lives overnight.

After numerous villagers were hit with massive bills in July 2025, a crowd of distressed customers gathered outside the local MSEDCL office, clutching their billing statements and demanding answers.

Protests erupted as people showed officials the impossible numbers on their bills. “Our last bill was around ₹2,500. Now it’s come to lakhs, how can this happen?” one affected resident asked incredulously. Shankar Bhangde’s grandson, Golu, recounted their shock. The inflated bill came right after the smart meter was installed, he told local reporters, and the family immediately approached MSEDCL officials in panic.

Under pressure, the officials examined the case and admitted an error, revising the Bhangde family’s bill down to ₹1,150 from over a lakh rupees. Two households in Kelwad had thus received abnormal bills due to meter swap issues, and both were eventually corrected on the spot after complaints.

MSEDCL explained that such extreme over-billing was a rare glitch, caused by the overlap of readings from the old meter and the new smart meter during the installation process.

According to the company’s statement, most Kelwad consumers were billed on their average summer consumption (since there was a short gap when meters were being changed), and only two cases showed erroneous, inflated amounts. Those two bills, including Gohatre’s ₹2.39 lakh shocker, were flagged and corrected once brought to attention, with assurances given that proper meter data would be used going forward.

MSEDCL also emphasised that 4,000 new smart meters had been installed in the area and not all were problematic, urging people not to generalise the smart meters as faulty.

But for the villagers who experienced the scare, the damage was done. The confidence in the new technology was badly shaken.

Around the same period, another community on the outskirts of Nagpur reported a similar ordeal. In Wadoda village, nearly every home had its old meter replaced by a new one as part of MSEDCL’s drive, yet residents say they were given no prior notice or explanation for this change. The replacements were carried out by contractors who sometimes sent young trainees door to door, swapping meters even when there had been no complaints of issues with the old devices. The result, villagers say, was chaos in their bills.

Roughly 90% of households in Wadoda saw a sudden surge in their electricity bills after the new meters came in.

Many families compared the latest readings to those from their old meters and found huge discrepancies. In some cases, a house that typically used a certain number of units was now being charged for double or triple that amount, despite its consumption habits not changing. Residents also noted that current bills were substantially higher than the same period’s bills from the previous year, reinforcing the suspicion that the new meters were over-recording usage.

Once again, groups of aggrieved consumers crowded the local subdivision office with complaints, and the issue drew local media attention. MSEDCL had to review numerous accounts from Wadoda and adjust those that were evidently out of line, while urging people to allow time for the new system to stabilise.

Still, the pattern was clear that without transparency and trust, each new meter installation was being greeted with fear and anger.

Faulty meters have been causing hardships in Vidarbha for years, even before the arrival of “smart” technology. A notable case from a few years ago underlines how severe the fallout can be for a common person battling the system.

Mirabai Shiwankar, a subsistence farmer from Kalmeshwar (Nagpur district), faced a nightmare with her electricity bills in late 2018. Her meter began acting up and yielding irregular readings, leading the utility to send her inflated bills that she knew were incorrect.

In September 2018, Shiwankar was charged about ₹1,900, which far exceeded her usual consumption. She protested at the MSEDCL office, and officials, upon review, conceded the meter was faulty and adjusted the bill down to ₹990, which she paid.

But the very next month, another bloated bill of ₹1,720 arrived, again unrelated to her actual usage. Once more, she challenged it, and it was reduced to ₹600 after negotiations.

This cycle repeated in December 2018 with a ₹1,500 bill (which included some earlier “arrears” that were questionable). The family paid that amount in full to avoid trouble, hoping that would settle the issue. Instead, things escalated. In January 2019, MSEDCL officials came and disconnected the Shiwankars’ electricity supply without warning.

The disconnection plunged the household into darkness, literally and figuratively, as they struggled to figure out why they were being punished despite paying what they were asked.

It turned out that the faulty meter and billing errors had never been fully resolved on MSEDCL’s side. The family’s persistence eventually led them to file a case with the local Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum (consumer court).

After hearing the evidence, the consumer forum delivered a scathing verdict against MSEDCL in 2021. The forum found that the power company was at fault on multiple counts. The meter was indeed defective, the bills issued were unjustified, and the company had cut off power without proper notice or cause.

In its order, the panel observed that the complainant “had to suffer a lot of mental, physical and emotional hardship due to the defect in service” of MSEDCL. It noted that if MSEDCL’s officers had intervened earlier and taken the customer’s grievance seriously, the issue could have been resolved without resorting to legal action.

Instead, the company’s indifference forced an ordinary farmer’s family to fight a bureaucratic battle for justice. The forum instructed MSEDCL to pay ₹26,000 as compensation to the Shiwankars and even recommended that this amount be recovered from the salaries of the responsible officials.

A copy of the judgment was sent to the utility’s Chief Engineer with directions to prevent such lapses in the future. This rare legal victory underscores what is at stake. Faulty meters and poor handling of complaints can push common people into financial stress and lengthy struggles, even to the point of engaging courts for redress.

Backlash Against Unannounced Smart Meters

For many in the region, such experiences have only deepened scepticism toward MSEDCL’s recent push for new meters.

Over 2024 and 2025, as the company accelerated its drive to install smart prepaid meters in Vidarbha, a groundswell of public opposition emerged.

Consumer rights groups, farmers’ organisations, and local politicians began mobilising against what they saw as a hasty and heavy-handed rollout.

In Nagpur, the Vidarbha Rajya Andolan Samiti (VRAS), a regional activist outfit, took to the streets in mid-2025 with an eye-catching protest.

Members of VRAS gathered at Variety Square in the city and set fire to a replica of a smart meter in front of a crowd, as a symbolic warning to authorities. The protesters accused MSEDCL of replacing old analogue meters with new digital ones secretly and without consent. They claimed that consumers often had no idea their meter was being changed until it was already done, and alleged that in some cases, even school-age youths hired by contractors were sent to perform the replacements door-to-door. VRAS activists argued that MSEDCL was describing the devices innocuously as “Time-of-Day” (ToD) meters to avoid public resistance, but in reality, these were the prepaid smart meters that many had opposed earlier.

Speaking at the protest, VRAS youth leader Mukesh Masurkar voiced the crowd’s concerns through a megaphone. “Smart meters from private companies are being pushed without calibration certificates or testing reports, and consumers are already getting inflated bills,” Masurkar declared to onlookers and the media.

He alleged that corporate interests were driving the meter project, pointing out that 14.5 lakh consumers in Nagpur and surrounding areas were slated for these meter replacements in a scheme heavily backed by private contractors.

According to VRAS, huge investments by meter manufacturing companies and service providers were at stake, and there was pressure to recover those costs from the public, either through the new meters or subsequent tariff hikes.

The fiery demonstration in Nagpur ended with police detaining several activists after some clashes, underlining the intensity of the confrontation. Meanwhile, in rural pockets of the district, quieter forms of protest were also taking place: in Wadoda (as noted earlier) and nearby Bidgaon, villagers gathered at local MSEDCL offices to voice their refusal of the new meters, effectively saying “we don’t want this” until clarity and trust could be established.

Political forces in Vidarbha have echoed the anti-smart-meter sentiment. The Jai Vidarbha Party (JVP), which advocates for Vidarbha to be a separate state, made electricity meters a rallying issue in 2024. JVP leaders argued that the prepaid meter initiative would hurt ordinary citizens and decided to launch agitations against it. In June 2024, the party announced a plan to stage a dharna (sit-in protest) in front of Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’s house in Nagpur, Fadnavis himself hails from Nagpur, to draw attention to the cause. “Our stand is clear, we will not allow prepaid meters to be installed,” said Mukesh Masurkar, JVP’s national vice-president, during a meeting with supporters. Masurkar, notably, is the same activist involved with VRAS, reflecting how various local groups have overlapping membership in opposing the meters.

The JVP protest highlighted some specific grievances: the selection of companies for the smart meter project and the potential financial burden on consumers. Party spokesmen pointed out that the government had awarded contracts to several firms, Genus Power, Adani, Montecarlo, and NCC, and questioned their qualifications, noting that “NCC is a construction company and Montecarlo is in textiles; what do they know about electricity meters?” This raised suspicions that the tendering was influenced by factors other than technical merit.

JVP also warned of practical risks if every household had a prepaid meter. They argued that in rural Vidarbha, where mobile network connectivity can be patchy, a prepaid system (which requires frequent online recharges like a mobile phone) could lead to people being unintentionally cut off simply because a recharge didn’t go through due to signal issues. Moreover, the party cited concerns about cybersecurity and fraud, fearing that digital prepaid accounts might be vulnerable to hacks or mistakes that could wipe out a poor consumer’s energy credit.

The JVP’s opposition framed the smart meter rollout as an anti-poor policy. Leaders noted that farmers and low-income families were accustomed to subsidised or nominal electricity bills (Vidarbha has many beneficiaries of a state scheme that heavily subsidises power for agricultural pumps).

For these groups, the prospect of paying full price upfront, even if coupled with government cash transfers or subsidies, was daunting. “It will lead to exploitation of the common people,” the JVP’s statement read, asserting that the move might benefit business houses at the cost of consumers.

The party even went so far as to threaten a form of civil disobedience. If the government did not cancel the smart meter plan, JVP activists said they would cut off the power supply to the Nagpur Collector’s office as a demonstration of what forced darkness feels like. While that threat was largely symbolic, it underscored the depth of anger simmering in the region.

Calls for Accountability and Answers

Amid mounting public pressure, MSEDCL and government officials have been forced to respond. The power utility insists that it is addressing the meter problems and that the push for smart meters is being misunderstood.

Senior MSEDCL executives have repeatedly stated that only a small fraction of the total meters are faulty, roughly 3% of the nearly 3 crore meters in service statewide, by their estimate, and that the company is replacing about 2 lakh meters each month to improve reliability.

They also claim that an adequate stock of new meters is being procured to clear the backlog of replacements, urging consumers not to resort to unofficial purchases.

As for the high bills and billing errors, MSEDCL’s stance is that these are isolated cases that get corrected when brought to notice, not a systemic flaw of the new technology. The utility has advertised the benefits of smart meters: more accurate readings, real-time tracking of consumption, and the convenience of prepaid recharges.

To reassure the public, officials note that the central government is subsidising the smart meter project with a ₹15,000 crore grant, and the ₹10,000–12,000 cost of each new meter will not be directly charged to individual consumers. The programme is part of a nationwide modernisation effort, the Smart Meter National Programme, aimed at curbing electricity theft and improving billing efficiency. MSEDCL emphasises that prepaid meters can help consumers budget their power usage and avoid accumulating large unpaid bills, since the power supply automatically cuts off if the credited amount is exhausted (preventing long-term debt).

They have also touted features like smartphone apps where users can monitor daily consumption and receive alerts, tools meant to encourage energy saving and transparency.

These official assurances, however, have done little to sway public opinion in Vidarbha so far. Given the stream of reports about glitches and heavy-handed implementation, many consumers remain deeply distrustful.

The tussle over faulty and smart meters has now advanced from the streets to the courtroom. In July 2025, the Vidarbha Electricity Consumers Association, a regional advocacy group, filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court seeking judicial intervention in the smart meter rollout.

The PIL challenges the “forced installation” of smart prepaid meters as arbitrary and illegal, arguing that consumers’ rights are being trampled.

It asks the court to halt the programme across Vidarbha until issues of accuracy, consent, and data security are addressed. The High Court responded by issuing notices to the Maharashtra State government and India’s central power ministry, demanding that they file replies and justify the legal basis and safeguards of the smart meter scheme. During hearings, the court pointedly inquired why the new meters should not be stopped, given the public complaints.

Government advocates have defended the plan by citing national policy. They pointed out that the Smart Grid Mission guidelines of 2015 encourage such metering upgrades, and that regulations in 2019 allow utilities to install meters as long as they meet technical standards.

But by late July 2025, both the state and central authorities had failed to submit detailed responses to the court. In a session on 26 July, the judges expressed displeasure at the delay and issued a final ultimatum. The governments were given until mid-August to respond, after which the court would proceed ex parte (without their input) if they remained silent.

This legal face-off has become a closely watched development, as its outcome could decisively influence how and whether the smart meter project moves forward in the region.

Meanwhile, everyday life goes on under this cloud of uncertainty. For many families in Vidarbha, each new electricity bill now brings a mix of anxiety and scrutiny.

People carefully cross-check their meter readings, keep records of past usage, and are quick to raise complaints if something looks amiss. Community WhatsApp groups buzz with discussions on how to file grievances with MSEDCL or contact the Electricity Regulatory Commission. In towns and villages, the once-unremarkable act of the meter reader coming by to note down consumption has turned into a moment of apprehension, whether the numbers be believable this time, or will there be another fight on hand?

The larger issue reflected in this struggle is one of accountability and trust. Consumers are asking for basic fairness: they want the devices that measure their power usage to be accurate and the billing process to be transparent.

When mistakes happen, they expect the utility to fix them quickly and without making citizens jump through hoops. So far, the response has been mixed. Some problems do get resolved, but often only after public pressure or intervention by officials and courts.

The stakes are especially high in a region like Vidarbha, where agriculture and rural livelihoods depend heavily on affordable electricity (for running water pumps, for example) and where many people live on tight budgets. An erroneous ₹10,000 addition to a bill can mean the difference between being able to buy farming supplies that month or not. Electricity is a lifeline, and the meter is the point of contact between ordinary people and this lifeline. If that little box on the wall gives readings they can’t trust, it fundamentally damages the relationship between the community and the power provider.

For now, Vidarbha’s power consumers remain caught between the promise of modernised electrical infrastructure and the day-to-day reality of irregular billing and recurring mistrust. Each faulty meter that goes unaddressed and each “smart” meter rolled out without community confidence continues to erode public faith. Residents who once barely thought about the electric meters on their homes now talk about them with frustration, even fear, an emblem of a system that feels unpredictable.

As legal battles and street protests continue, ordinary citizens in Vidarbha are sending a clear message. They want an electricity supply that is reliable and fair, not another source of hardship.

Restoring trust in that humble meter on the wall has become a critical task for authorities.

The outcome, whether through improved governance, technological fixes, or judicial intervention, will determine if the people of Vidarbha can finally stop worrying that the next electric bill might bring a nasty surprise and go back to treating electricity as a basic amenity, not a daily struggle.