The Delhi Jal Board (DJB) has set the ball rolling on a door-to-door consumer verification drive over the next six months with an aim to increase the connection database —a long-standing issue for the utility, while laying the groundwork for regular meter reading and bill delivery, said senior officials.
For this, Delhi has been divided in three packages: west, southwest and south; outer north, northwest, central north and north district in the second; and east, northeast and southeast. It will hire three private companies to carry out door-to-door eKYC, conduct regular meter reading, and ensure verified water bill distribution, the officials said.
One of the DJB officials said that bids for all three packages have been invited and the process will be wrapped up by the end of May.
A second DJB official associated with the process said that companies will first carry out the verification and e-KYC of all consumer connection details with DJB using a mobile application.
“They will create a database of consumer details like connection K-number, name, last four digits of Aadhar, mobile number, WhatsApp number, and the number of people in household along with address details and geo-coordinates,” the official said.
DJB will also collect information regarding last bill raised, meter status, the photo of the meter, and the nature of water usage. “It will be a comprehensive database that will help reset the sector. At the end of six months, every registered consumer is expected to have a verified digital record,” the further official explained.
DJB has also added a “proof-of-delivery” component in the project and the companies will be expected to deposit bill receipts along with a photo of the property or the door.
The DJB’s water billing sector has long remained in a disarray with only 2,983,000 active connections— a fraction when compared to the 73,00,000 electricity meter connections active in the city. On January 9, HT had reported that an internal assessment by the utility has found that nearly 60% of its consumers were not receiving physical water bills at one. Water minister Parvesh Verma had said the government was planning to completely overhaul the DJB’s outdated billing system.
“At present, DJB services approximately 35,14,000 total consumer connections (TNCs), comprising 29.83 lakhs active connections and 5.30 lakhs inactive connections,” said the project report, seen by HT.
“Of these, around 33,80,000 connections are metered, reflecting the substantial scale and complexity of its metering and billing operations. The magnitude of this operational footprint necessitates structured and technology-enabled field processes for accurate meter reading, timely bill generation and consumer data verification,” the report further added.
DJB service areas are divided in 40 zones, of which 36 are managed directly by DJB, while the rest rely on public-private partnership (PPP) mode for meter reading and bill distribution. These zones collectively cover 250 municipal wards, mapped across 68 assembly constituencies.
Atul Goel, who heads United Residents Joint Action (URJA) — an umbrella body of RWAs — said that the existing billing system of DJB is “total failure” and even the claim that 40% of the bills were being delivered physically seemed to be “highly exaggerated”.
“When was the last time people saw a physical water bill being delivered? It must be less than even 10%.”
According to officials, the project is estimated at ₹60 crore. While a six-month deadline has been fixed for the e-KYC project, the system for the meter reading and billing exercise will be put in place over the subsequent six months, an official explained.
A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) on functioning of the DJB, tabled in the Delhi Assembly last month, had flagged large-scale gaps in the department’s billing system. Almost 50-53% of the water supplied by the DJB was classified as non-revenue water (NRW) — it either leaks or is stolen through unauthorised connections. In its report, CAG had said the shortfall in the collection of water charges increased from 30.5% in 2017-18 to 50.5% by 2021-22.
“This besides being indicative of inadequate effort on the part of DJB to improve revenue collection, also raises questions on the accuracy of the billing process itself,” CAG concluded. The estimated amount of revenue not realised by DJB during the said period on account of NRW was ₹4,988 crore.
CAG had also flagged the outdated revenue management system being used by the water utility. DJB is using (from 2011) IT based Revenue Management System (RMS) for providing service such as online application of water connection, mutation, bill generation and payment. A separate programme has been initiated for a new RMS with cloud-based data storage.