Kamal Kumar Biswas.TOD.Kumarganj
In a bleak hamlet fringed by ponds and parched fields in West Bengal’s South Dinajpur district, an elderly tribal couple has been forced to liquidate the last remnants of their livelihood to settle an electricity bill that officials say had ballooned to more than 100,000 rupees — a sum so staggering that it has ignited public anger and raised profound questions about the ethics and accountability of the state’s power utility.
The couple, Bishan Hembrom and his wife, Sita Baskey, subsistence farmers from Dhadalpara village in Kumarganj block, sold nine decimals of ancestral land and leased out additional plots to scrape together the money demanded by the electricity department. For nearly a year, their modest home — two tin-roofed rooms allotted under the Indira Awas Yojana a decade ago — had remained in darkness after their power connection was severed.The house, still unplastered, contains no bed, no cot, no furniture of note. Even in the piercing winter cold, the couple sleeps on the bare floor, a thin sheet their only shield. Electricity, when it existed, powered just two light bulbs and a single television set.Yet when Mr. Bishan Hembrom approached the Barahar electricity office in desperation, he was informed that five years of unpaid electricity charges amounted to 73,000 rupees, with an additional 35,000 rupees levied as interest — pushing the total demand beyond 108,000 rupees.
The couple contests the very foundation of the claim. They say that for years, meter readers failed to generate bills, citing alleged technical faults in the meter. On several occasions, they say, officials came away empty-handed, telling them billing was impossible.Still, the debt accumulated — silently, relentlessly.On Tuesday, having sold land that had sustained them for generations, the couple arrived at the electricity office with 110,000 rupees. They allege that officials collected roughly 103,000 rupees, though the three receipts in their possession total only 98,340 rupees. The fate of the remaining sum —nearly 5,000 rupees — remains unexplained.Within hours of payment, electricity was restored.
The episode has provoked fierce criticism. Local leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party described the incident as “inhuman” and emblematic of institutional cruelty inflicted on society’s most vulnerable. Villagers have echoed the outrage, asking how a household with minimal consumption could amass such a colossal debt — and by what opaque formula interest alone could swell to 35,000 rupees.Nazmul Haque, the station manager of the Kumarganj electricity office, said he was on leave and would “look into the matter” upon returning. Another district electricity official, Shubhamoy Sarkar, said an inquiry was underway.
For Mr.Bishan Hemrom and Ms.Sita Baskey, however, the investigation comes too late. The land is gone. What remains is a flickering light in a fragile home — and a story that lays bare the crushing imbalance of power between bureaucracy and the rural poor, where errors go uncorrected, silence compounds into debt, and survival itself becomes collateral.
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