Power and water in your name

The keys do not come with the utilities. What you are handed at possession is usually the builder's own arrangement: a connection billed in the builder's name, or in the name of an association that does not yet exist, running on a construction-stage tariff that costs more than a settled domestic one. Moving power and water into your own name is paperwork you do yourself, and nobody chases you to do it.

It also cannot happen before it is allowed to. Karnataka's building law bars BESCOM and BWSSB from giving a flat a permanent connection until the building has an occupancy certificate (OC). Everything in this guide – individual meters, name transfers, deposits, a fresh application if none exists – sits downstream of that one document. If the OC is still pending, nothing here can move.

This guide covers BESCOM and BWSSB in the order you will actually deal with them, what a piped-gas connection involves where the network has reached a building, and links to our separate guides on generator power and handover paperwork rather than repeating them.

From possession to your name

The distance between the keys and a bill with your own name on it runs through several steps, and the OC sits at the start of all of them.

How BESCOM meters a flat

How your building is metered depends on how it was built, not on the fact that you personally own one flat in it. BESCOM's conditions of supply set out three patterns.

A building that is purely residential is entitled to individual metering: BESCOM will arrange low-tension (LT) supply with a separate meter to every flat, at the applicant's request. Where a building mixes residential and commercial space but the combined load is under 100 kW – true of almost every mid-size apartment block, even one with ground-floor shops – every unit still gets its own meter, commercial or domestic, billed at whichever tariff applies to it. Only a large complex on high-tension (HT) supply is metered differently: a single bulk meter for the building, with a sub-meter netting off the commercial portion so it can be billed at the commercial rate separately from the residential balance.

Either way, the connection usually starts in the builder's name, because it was sanctioned before any flat was sold. Once flats are sold, the conditions of supply give the builder two lawful ways to hand this on, and neither counts as an unlicensed resale of electricity. The builder can stay the registered consumer and simply pass the cost through to flat owners by sub-metering them and billing on a no-profit, no-loss basis – in effect, splitting the one bill. Or, once an owners' association is formed and registered, the whole connection can be transferred into the association's name, which then does the same sub-metering itself. Either arrangement is common, and both are explicitly allowed rather than tolerated. What it means for you: the meter reading at your own door may not be the bill BESCOM sends. Ask your association which of the two arrangements is in force, and for common areas – lifts, corridor lighting, the pump room – whether that power is billed to the association as part of this same connection or separately.

Getting BESCOM into your name

Two different processes lead to the same place, and which one applies depends on whether a connection already covers your flat.

If your flat already has a connection – the ordinary case in a completed building – you transfer it rather than starting again. The registered consumer (usually the builder, or the association) gives a consent letter transferring the connection and any deposit held against it. Without that letter, you can instead produce proof of ownership: the registered sale deed, a partition deed or the khata. Either way you also execute an indemnity bond, confirm there are no arrears on the account, pay a transfer fee, and sign a fresh supply agreement. If the outgoing consumer's consent to move the deposit is not produced, you pay a fresh deposit as though you were a new consumer rather than inheriting the old one.

If no connection covers your flat yet – less common, but possible where a builder never wired individual meters – you apply as a new consumer. The application is filed by the owner or occupier, with proof of ownership or occupancy, an indemnity bond if you are not yet the registered owner, proof of address and your PAN. BESCOM then issues a power sanction stating the security deposit payable, you sign a supply agreement and pay the deposit, and the connection is serviced once your electrical contractor's completion-and-test report is in.

Either route involves a security deposit. BESCOM's own 2025 tariff order describes the deposit for a domestic connection on the basis of two months' minimum demand (2 MMD), under the K.E.R.C. (Security Deposit) Regulations, 2007 – in effect, roughly two months of what your flat is expected to draw, rather than a flat rupee amount that is the same for every flat. It earns interest at the Reserve Bank's Bank Rate, credited to your account each year, and is refunded when the connection is closed, after any dues are adjusted against it.

One more thing to expect: Karnataka's regulator introduced pre-paid smart metering rules in 2024. For an ordinary domestic connection, taking a smart meter is your choice, not a requirement – the regulation makes it mandatory only for temporary connections, the kind a builder runs during construction. If BESCOM offers you one at the point of transfer or new connection, you can decline it for now.

BWSSB: tied to your OC

The same rule that blocks a permanent BESCOM connection before the OC blocks BWSSB too, under the same section of the Greater Bengaluru Governance Act, 2024: an occupancy certificate is what makes a permanent connection possible, as distinct from whatever supply the site ran on during construction. Our guide to water in a Bengaluru flat covers where that water actually comes from, including the borewells and tankers many buildings still rely on; this section covers only the paperwork of getting the piped connection into your name.

Where a building already has a BWSSB water-and-sanitary connection and nothing has been added or rebuilt since it was sanctioned, changing the name on it is the simpler of two routes: an online application against the connection's RR number, a fee of ₹250, and a service-guarantee turnaround of 10 days. It is a single application covering both water supply and the sanitary (sewerage) connection together, since BWSSB issues them as one connection, not two.

Where there has been additional construction since the connection was sanctioned, or the flat has no BWSSB connection recorded against it at all, BWSSB directs you instead to its "Jaladhare" portal for a fresh connection application. That application asks for the building plan, the lease-cum-sale deed or equivalent title document, the khata, a photograph of the building with the owner, and – where the board's rules call for it – the occupancy certificate, a rainwater-harvesting photograph and, for a building required to have one, an STP photograph. The portal itemises separate charges for an application fee, an attachment fee, an inspection fee, a deposit set at three months' minimum, and a pro-rata charge for extending the water and sewerage network, at a different rate for a residential building than for any other use. Rainwater harvesting is not optional paperwork here: it is a building condition under BWSSB's own Act, tied by Karnataka's groundwater law to whether a permanent connection can be given at all in the areas the state has notified – the water-supply guide above covers this in more depth.

Piped gas, if it has arrived

Bengaluru has an authorised piped-gas network, though it is not a utility every building can assume it has. GAIL Gas Limited is the entity the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB) authorised to build and operate the city gas network covering Bengaluru Urban and Bengaluru Rural districts, an authorisation dating to 2015. Unlike BESCOM and BWSSB, this is not a statutory connection tied to your OC or to possession – it is a commercial application to GAIL Gas, and it only reaches a flat where the pipeline network has actually reached that street. Ask your association, or GAIL Gas directly, whether your building is within a "gasified" area before you assume the option exists.

Where it does, GAIL Gas's own customer registration process asks for proof of identity, proof of ownership (with an undertaking) and, optionally, a no-objection certificate, and sets an interest-free, refundable security deposit of ₹4,000 per domestic connection, plus a separate refundable deposit of ₹500 against your bill payments, before gas is connected – ₹4,000 + ₹500, a total of ₹4,500 upfront. GAIL Gas also offers an instalment route for that deposit rather than paying it in one go. Because this is the supplier's own commercial terms rather than a rule set by a regulator, treat the figures as GAIL Gas's current published terms rather than a fixed statutory charge, and confirm the current amount when you apply.

Every utility, side by side

Temporary supply vs permanent

The connection running your building site during construction and the one you eventually hold in your own name are not the same product with different names on the bill. They are sanctioned under different rules, at different cost.

Generator power, and handover

A flat's generator is not a utility you separately connect or pay a deposit for. It belongs to the building, and the diesel or common-area power it draws is billed by the owners' association through the monthly maintenance bill, alongside the lift and the pump sets. Our guide to maintenance and the corpus fund covers how that bill is put together and what GST applies to it; there is nothing further to set up here.

Most of what BESCOM and BWSSB will ask you for – the consent letter, the OC, proof that there are no arrears – is easiest to collect from the builder at the point of handover, before the sales team has moved on to the next project. Our handover and snag-list guide sets out everything else to collect on that day; treat the utility paperwork as one more item on the same list, not a separate errand for later.

• Get the consent letters for both BESCOM and BWSSB from the builder at handover, before contact gets harder.
• Check for arrears on both connections before you agree to a transfer; you inherit the account, not just the meter.
• Confirm which BESCOM arrangement applies: the builder still billing you directly, or the association holding the connection.
• Use the online routes first: BESCOM's consumer portal, BWSSB's change-of-ownership or Jaladhare portals, before a branch visit.
• Ask whether your street is gasified before assuming piped gas is an option.
• Do not open a separate account for generator or common-area power: that is billed through the maintenance bill, not a utility connection of its own.
• Keep every acknowledgement: a buyer from you will ask to see that both connections were properly transferred, not just paid.