CESC Limited
electricity supply company in India

The Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation (CESC) is the Kolkata-based flagship company of the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, born from the erstwhile RPG Group, under the chairmanship of businessman Sanjiv Goenka. It is an Indian electricity generation and the sole distribution company serving 567 square kilometres (219 sq mi) of area administered by the Kolkata municipal corporation, in the city of Kolkata, as well as parts of Howrah, Hooghly, 24 Parganas (North) and 24 Parganas (South) districts in the state of West Bengal. It also serves power distribution in Kota, Bikaner and Bharatpur in Rajasthan under the name CESC RAJASTHAN. It serves 3.0 million consumers approximately, which includes domestic, industrial and commercial users.
History
The first demonstration of electric light in Calcutta was conducted on 24 July 1879 by P W Fleury & Co. In 1881, 36 electric lights lit up a Cotton Mill of Mackinnon & Mackenzie. The Government of Bengal passed the Calcutta Electric Lighting Act in 1895. The first license covered an area of 5.64 square miles (14.6 km2). On 7 January 1897 Kilburn & Co. secured the Calcutta electric lighting license as agents of The Indian Electric Company Limited. The company soon changed its name to the Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation Limited and in 1897, The Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation Limited was registered in London.
The public source identifies “CESC Limited” as electricity supply company in India. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around CESC, Limited and electricity.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3348734. The first chronological checks are 1879, 1881, 1895 and 1897.
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This entry incorporates text from “CESC Limited” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.