ISLAMABAD: Government`s tall claims about recovery of electricity dues amounting to billions of rupees have proved to be unrealistic as the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has been asked to halt its campaign to recover the dues, according to inside sources.

During its two-month campaign, the NAB recovered Rs1.9 billion out of the total dues of Rs74bn but it was barred from proceeding further, reportedly because of influence of some powerful defaulters.

Following the end of the NAB`s role, the task of recovery has been given back to the distribution companies (Discos).

NAB spokesman Mohammad Irfan said the bureau had handed over the task to Discos and stopped action against defaulters. `The NAB halted its operation at the request of the ministry of water and power and someDiscos.

A senior official of the NAB said the bureau had stopped recovery of over Rs74bn from more than 50,000 defaulters because powerful lobbies had succeeded in excluding NAB from the recovery drive.

The NAB started action against `powerful` defaulters at the request of the ministry which, through its letter on March 8, 2013, had asked it to help recover overdue bills amounting to Rs112bn from defaulters.

But as the NAB progressed in its recovery drive, it also discovered wrongdoings in Discos, the official said. It found glaring discrepancies such as excess and fake billing and bills issued without meter readings, names of consumers and addresses of connections.

He said the figures of 126,000 defaulters and unpaid bills of Rs112bn provided by the ministry were exaggerated. The lists provided later by Discos reduced the amount to Rs76.90bn and the number of defaulters to 63,254.