Landlord Charging ₹10 a Unit? What the DISCOM Rate Actually Is

1. The short answer

Take a common arrangement: one connection with a 10 kW sanctioned load, five sub-metered tenants, 900 units across the building in a month, and your sub-meter reading 180 units. Your fair share is your unit share of the energy charges plus an equal share of the fixed charge. On current tariff data that comes to:

So in five of those six cases ₹10 is a markup — ranging from a modest ₹146 a month in Bengaluru on a commercial connection to ₹615 a month in Delhi on a domestic one. In the sixth, a UP tenant on a commercial connection is being undercharged by ₹477. Which of these you are in depends almost entirely on one thing, covered in section 5.

Delhi figures include the monthly PPAC at its current 16%. The UP and Karnataka figures exclude their monthly fuel surcharge, which is not modelled here — that surcharge would raise the legal cost slightly and narrow the gap, so those two rows understate the landlord's case rather than overstate it.

Run these numbers for your own DISCOM, units and rate →

2. Why a single per-unit rate is the wrong shape

Domestic tariffs in India are telescopic. You do not pay one rate on everything; you pay a low rate on the first block of units, a higher rate on the next, and so on. Delhi's domestic schedule runs ₹3.00 a unit up to 200, ₹4.50 to 400, ₹6.50 to 800, ₹7.00 to 1200 and ₹8.00 above that. Only a household burning well over a thousand units a month ever touches the top rate.

On top of the energy charge sits a fixed charge, levied once on the connection according to its sanctioned load — not once per tenant — plus electricity duty and a fuel-cost adjustment as percentages. Add it all up and divide by the units and you get the connection's effective rate, which is the only number that can fairly be compared against a flat ₹10.

Flat rates are usually set once, to cover the worst case, and then never revisited. That is why they tend to sit near the top slab while the connection's real effective rate sits far below it. It is habit far more often than it is malice, which matters for how you raise it.

3. Delhi — the widest gap, and a subsidy that is not yours

Delhi has the cheapest domestic power of the three and therefore the biggest gap. A 900-unit domestic connection costs about ₹6.58 a unit all-in, so ₹10 is roughly a 52% markup — about ₹7,380 a year on a 180-unit tenant.

There is a second thing worth understanding. The GNCTD subsidy makes the first 200 units free and gives 50% off the first 200 for consumers between 201 and 400 units. It applies to a consumer, once, on their own connection. A landlord's single connection carrying five flats sails past 400 units, so nobody in the building gets it — whereas five separate domestic connections might each have qualified. If you are being charged ₹10 a unit and the building has lost the subsidy because everyone is behind one meter, both halves of that are worth raising.

See the current Delhi tariff schedule, or the Tata Power-DDL bill guide for how PPAC and the subsidy cliffs work on a real Delhi bill.

4. Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka — a much narrower gap

The ₹10 story is genuinely weaker outside Delhi, and any guide that tells you otherwise is not doing the arithmetic.

In Uttar Pradesh, a domestic connection at this size works out near ₹7.85 a unit, so ₹10 is about a 27% markup — ₹388 a month on our example tenant. UP's fixed charges are heavy relative to Delhi's, and heavy fixed charges push the effective rate up, which narrows the gap.

In Karnataka, BESCOM's domestic schedule lands around ₹7.47 a unit at 900 units, a 34% markup. Bengaluru is where the ₹10–₹12 flat rate is most entrenched and least justified by the underlying tariff, but the gap is still half what it is in Delhi.

Both states levy a monthly fuel-cost surcharge on top, which closes the gap a little further. Check the live figures on the UP and Karnataka tariff pages.

5. The one question that changes everything: which category?

This is the variable that decides whether you have a case at all. If the landlord's meter is on a commercial / non-domestic schedule — which several DISCOMs require once a property is let out — the legal rate jumps sharply:

Read the UP row again. On a commercial connection in Uttar Pradesh the true cost of those units is ₹12.65 — a landlord charging ₹10 there is absorbing about ₹477 a month of your electricity, not overcharging you for it. Delhi and Karnataka still leave a gap on commercial rates, but a much smaller one.

So before raising anything, ask which category the connection is on. It is printed on the bill — LT-I versus LT-II in Delhi, LMV-1 versus LMV-2 in UP, LT-1 versus LT-3(a) in Karnataka. That single line decides the entire conversation.

6. How to work out your own number

You need three things: your sub-meter reading, the main-meter units for the same month, and the connection's category. Then:

1. Compute the whole connection's bill at the DISCOM's real slabs for the total units — not for your units alone.
2. Take your share of the energy charges in proportion to your units. Pro-rata is the even-handed method here, and the reason is worth stating: on a telescopic tariff the cheap opening slabs belong to the connection as a whole. Re-running the slabs on your 180 units in isolation would let whoever is metered "first" claim the ₹3 band while a neighbour absorbs the ₹8 one.
3. Add an equal share of the fixed charge. It exists whether or not you switch anything on, so splitting it per sub-meter is the usual fair arrangement.

The tenant sub-meter calculator does all three from live tariff data for any DISCOM and prints a comparison you can hand over. If you do not know the main-meter reading, it will bill your units as though they were the whole connection — that understates the real per-unit cost, so whatever gap it reports is a floor.

7. Raising it without starting a fight

Lead with the number, not the accusation. Most flat rates were set years ago and never revisited, and a tariff-backed figure usually settles it on its own.

• Ask for the main-meter bill for the same month. You are paying a share of it, so it is a reasonable thing to ask for — and it settles the category question at the same time.
• Propose a method, not a rate. "My units at the connection's effective rate, plus an equal share of the fixed charge" survives every tariff revision. A fixed ₹/unit goes stale the moment the DISCOM revises anything.
• Allow for real costs. Common-area lighting, lifts, pumps and a working sub-meter are genuine expenses. The objection is to a margin on the power itself, not to a landlord recovering what the connection actually costs.
• If it stays unresolved, reselling electricity above the applicable tariff is restricted in most states, and your DISCOM's consumer grievance forum will accept a complaint. The complaint helper has the forum and the 1912 national helpline for your state.

Sub-metering rules, permitted service charges and what a landlord may add above cost are set by each State Electricity Regulatory Commission, not nationally, and they differ meaningfully between states. This guide tells you what the units cost under the tariff; it is not legal advice and does not decide what your tenancy agreement permits.

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