CEIG Approval in Karnataka: The Chief Electrical Inspectorate Process Step by Step

CEIG approval in Karnataka means getting the Department of Electrical Inspectorate to clear your electrical installation before it is energised. You file drawings through a licensed electrical contractor, build to the approved scheme, record tests, and the inspecting officer visits, lists defects and grants safety approval. Which officer decides depends on the installation's size, and the Chief Electrical Inspector in Bengaluru handles only the largest.

What is CEIG approval in Karnataka, and who gives it?

The Electrical Inspectorate is a department of the state Energy Department, headed by the Chief Electrical Inspector to Government (CEIG) in Bengaluru, with Additional Chief Electrical Inspectors (ACEI) for the Bangalore North, Bangalore South, Mysore, Mangalore, Dharwad and Kalburgi zones. The legal basis its website lists is the Electricity Act 2003, the Electricity (Karnataka Amendment) Act 2013, the Karnataka Electrical Inspectorate (Powers, Functions and Levy of Fees) Rules 2018 and the CEA safety regulations. Safety approval is granted under regulations 34, 38 and 45 of the CEA (Measures relating to Safety and Electric Supply) Regulations, 2023.

The department's own notice says unauthorised energisation of lines, transformers and generators will draw action under the rules and prosecution proceedings. A plant that runs before approval carries that risk on top of any insurance problem.

Which installations need approval, and which officer decides?

The Inspectorate's page on approval of drawings says that master unit substations, switching stations, transmission lines, and the installations of independent power producers, co-generation and captive power plants, and multi-storey buildings of 24 metres and above go to the CEIG in Bengaluru. Consumer installations (LT, HT, multi-storey buildings of 15 metres and above) and DG sets go to the jurisdictional offices under a delegation of powers. A Government of Karnataka notification dated 24 March 2025 sets those powers by capacity, and the table below is a summary of the drawing-approval part for the installations a factory or commercial owner is most likely to have.

Two cautions. The notification marks its rooftop solar rows "based on specific request", and the department's separate rooftop solar page gives a different ladder: up to 10 kWp to the ESCOM sub-division, above 10 up to 100 kWp to the jurisdictional ACEI, and above 100 kWp to the CEIG. The two sources disagree, so ask the office which applies to your plant. Second, regulations 32 and 45 let an owner self-certify installations at or below a voltage the state notifies, and we could not find Karnataka's notified voltage on the pages we read, so confirm it for your supply.

What documents does the drawing application need?

The common set the department lists is: the application in Form-1, signed by the applicant or the general power of attorney holder; the receipt for the prescribed drawing scrutiny fee; the licence of the electrical contractor, the supervisor's licence and the wireman permit endorsed to that contractor; Affidavit-8, authorising the contractor to act for the owner; Form Z, the estimate and agreement between owner and contractor; and proof of ownership or occupancy.

Then come the installation-specific items. For an HT installation, the licensee's power sanction letter with sketch and estimate. For a DG set, the owner's consent if you are not the owner, and the approval copy of any existing installation with the ESCOM RR number. For an LT addition, the approved drawings of the existing installation. The electrical drawings themselves are a single-line diagram, a plan and elevation, and for solar the items in the rooftop procedure: protection details, loading, bidirectional metering, earthing and clearances. Applications for industrial installations are also offered through the Seva Sindhu portal, which lists a service time of 25 days at the head office and 20 days at a field office, with no application fee beyond the scrutiny fee. Those are the department's targets, not a promise, and they do not include time you spend answering observations.

You can test a file against this list with our CEIG readiness calculator, and the general sequence is in our CEIG guide for factories.

What happens after the drawings are approved?

Build strictly to the approved drawings. On completion, the licensed electrical contractor sends a completion report in the prescribed form to the jurisdictional officer, with the inspection fee receipt, calibration reports, site test results and the manufacturers' test reports. On inspection day the owner's representative, the electrical supervisor and a contractor representative must be present with their licences, permits and testing instruments. Defects the inspector records are rectified and a rectification report signed by the consumer and the contractor is sent back. After the officer verifies compliance, safety approval is granted and the ESCOM can energise.

The head-office flow chart the department publishes shows where a file can loop: the application is scrutinised by the Assistant Electrical Inspector, reviewed up the chain, and either approved or returned as an observation letter that you must answer and resubmit. A file with a licence that has not been endorsed to the contractor, a sanction letter that does not match the single-line diagram, or an unsigned affidavit invites that loop.

How do you prepare a clean file?

• Fix the sanctioned load and the transformer rating first, so the sanction letter, the single-line diagram and the load schedule say the same thing.
• Confirm the contractor's licence, the supervisor's licence and the wireman permits are valid and endorsed before the Form-1 goes in.
• Decide which office decides your file from the table above, and ask that office for its current checklist and fee schedule.
• Book calibrated instruments and record earth resistance for every pit, insulation resistance and relay trip tests on the day, not afterwards.
• Keep the approved drawings on site; the inspector checks the built plant against them.

Periodic inspections follow, and the notification assigns them by installed capacity, from the Assistant Electrical Inspector for the smallest captive sets, rooftop solar included, up to the Additional Chief Electrical Inspector for the largest, so the file you build now is the file that office will ask for later.

How Secured Engineers helps

We prepare drawings in-house and file Fire NOC, CEIG and DISCOM net-metering applications in-house, so the single-line diagram, the load schedule and the sanction agree before the file leaves our office. MEPF and solar can be run under one contract. We work from our Noida (Delhi NCR) and Ludhiana offices, across 535+ projects in 18+ states, with 89.77% repeat clients. For Karnataka we mobilise from Noida and Ludhiana, so treat this as a buyer's guide to the process and confirm local requirements with the Inspectorate.

If you already have a drawing set, we can review your file against the department's checklist before it goes in. See our CEIG approval consultancy, message us on WhatsApp, call +91 70099 85817, or ask for a free proposal.