Tangedco wants tenants to link Aadhaar with domestic connection

CHENNAI: After the drive to link Aadhaar with domestic electricity consumer numbers, Tangedco has started instructing the house owners who have not linked their tenant's Aadhaar for the rented houses to provide the latter too. The new move has created confusion among domestic consumers.

As part of the validation of the Aadhaar linked with the domestic consumer number and other subsidy-availing consumer categories, Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA) which was tasked by Tangedco to validate the database has found several domestic consumers has linked their Aadhaar as owners and well as tenants.

To verify the status of such consumers, a senior Tangedco official said that they were inspecting such domestic premises and directing tenants to link their Aadhaar.

When asked about the house owner's apprehension about linking the tenant's Aadhaar, the official said that the Aadhaar linking process was done to only collect the data. "If the tenant vacates the house, the new tenant's Aadhaar can be linked online," the official said.

A consumer at Madipakkam who owns three houses said that electricity officials visited his residence and asked about the ownership details and enquired about the Aadhaar linked as tenants in the other two domestic connections.

"They wanted the tenant to link their own Aadhar instead of mine," he said, adding that there was no clarity on why they insist on tenants registering if they would not stop the subsidy based on multiple connections.

Out of 267.55 lakh subsidy-availing consumer categories including domestic and agricultural, 266.87 lakh consumers have linked their Aadhaar.