In an effort to curb unauthorised load in the agriculture sector, the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) has introduced a voluntary disclosure scheme (VDS) to regularise unauthorised additional load of agricultural power tubewell consumers.The scheme will remain in force for 45 days from October 1 and is aimed at ascertaining the actual load of tubewells. It will be applicable to agricultural tubewell consumers existing up to May 29.The service connection charges for regularisation of additional load under the scheme have been fixed at Rs 2,500 per horsepower, down from the earlier Rs 6,572 per horsepower. Similarly, the security amount has been reduced to Rs 200 per horsepower from Rs 400 per horsepower.Consumers may either remove the unauthorised load from their agricultural tubewell connections or regularise it under the scheme by depositing the required amount.For self-declaration, consumers will have to fill the prescribed Form 1.Every paddy season, over 13.94 lakh tubewells pump out gallons of water to irrigate fields across the state. A majority of these borewells are located in districts with an overexploited water table.A tubewell pumps out 30.24 lakh litres of water per week with an average eight hours of power supply, adding up to 4,385 billion litres of water per week.Ludhiana has the maximum number of tubewells (1.17 lakh), followed by Gurdaspur (99,581), Amritsar (93,946) and Sangrur (93,669). These districts have shown the steepest decline in the water table, with farmers in Barnala and Sangrur extracting water from the maximum depth by using 17-BHP motors.Under the new scheme, field officers and enforcement teams will inspect the connections of agricultural consumers to verify the connected load and assist consumers in correctly assessing the unauthorised load.“During the period, no penalty or load surcharge will be imposed on unauthorised load detected during inspection or voluntarily declared by the consumer,” the officials said.