Punjab and Haryana High Court has sought answers from Punjab Government and PSPCL regarding outstanding electricity bills (symbolic photo)
State Bureau, Chandigarh. The government departments of Punjab themselves are becoming defaulters in payment of electricity bills and the situation is such that the state electricity distribution company has to take loans to meet its expenses. In this background, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has sought response from the Punjab Government and the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) on a PIL challenging the decision of the State Government to sell public assets.
In the petition filed by Chandigarh resident Rajbir Singh, serious objections have been raised regarding the deteriorating financial condition of PSPCL, negligence in payment by government departments and sale of public properties in the name of clearing electricity dues. According to the petition, the total electricity dues of PSPCL on various departments of the Punjab government by the end of August 2025 have reached Rs 2,582.24 crore.
Apart from this, the outstanding of electricity subsidy on the state government is also said to be more than Rs 10 thousand crore. The petition revealed that due to financial pressure, PSPCL had to take a loan of about Rs 800 crore to pay for daily expenses, employee salaries, pensions and power purchase in the year 2024 alone. At the same time, the total debt burden on the state government has been claimed to increase to about Rs 4 lakh crore by October 2025, which has been described as a serious warning for the economic health of Punjab.
According to the data given in the petition, the largest share of electricity dues is on only four major departments. Dues are shown at Rs 1,013.7 crore on Water Supply and Sanitation Department, Rs 852.4 crore on Local Government Department, Rs 382.8 crore on Rural Development and Panchayat Department and Rs 127.4 crore on Health and Family Welfare Department. About 92 percent of the total outstanding burden is reported to be on these four departments alone. In the PIL, a strong protest has been lodged against the state government's policy of selling public properties under the 'Optimum Use Vacant Government Land (OUVGL)' scheme. The petitioner said that it has been decided to hand over about 165 acres of valuable land of Guru Nanak Dev Thermal Plant located in Bathinda to the Punjab Urban Development Authority for auction.
Apart from this, there is a plan to raise about Rs 2,789 crore by selling valuable properties like Power Colony of Ludhiana and Bandugar Site of Patiala. The petition has described these properties as 'family silver' i.e. ancestral heritage and said that selling them for short-term fiscal needs would be injustice to the interests of future generations.
The petitioner has demanded from the High Court that PSPCL should be instructed to disconnect the electricity connections of the defaulting government departments under the law. Along with this, the state government should be ordered to immediately pay the pending electricity bills and subsidy amount of more than Rs 10,000 crore. After hearing all the parties, the High Court has summoned the reply from the Punjab Government and PSPCL.