Bhopal: At dawn every day, elders of Goodar village in Madhya Pradesh’s Shivpuri district task one of the village youths with his most important assignment of the day — collecting mobile phones from the villagers that need recharging and leave for a nearby village. This ritual has been in place since the last six months after Central Zone Power Distribution Company (Central Discom) decided to snap power supply to the village for nonpayment of 20-year-old dues by 120 residents of the village. The defaulters are said to owe the company as much as Rs 20 lakh. So, till date, the villagers have met government officials as well as power minister Rajendra Shukla and chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, but to little avail. Central Discom has flatly refused to restore the village’s power supply until it recovers the arrears. Banks, hospitals and government offices in the village also function without electricity. “Is it justified to make all 7,000 residents of the village suffer because some people haven’t paid their power bills?” asked Ramakant Sharma, block president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha. “We have not snapped their power connection. A transformer in the area is out of order. But we will not replace it till the defaulters pay up,” said G K Bhardya, the discom’s divisional superintendent engineer.