Updated: August 2026
You apply for a LESCO new connection at enc.com.pk, the official Electricity New Connection (ENC) portal run by PITC, or on paper at your local LESCO sub-division office. Applying costs nothing. You attach around half a dozen documents (CNIC copies, ownership proof, a Rs 50 stamp-paper affidavit and a wiring test report do the heavy lifting), LESCO surveys the site, and for a household connection of up to 15 kW it must issue your demand notice within 10 days of a complete application. Pay that notice at a designated bank or through the portal, and NEPRA’s Consumer Service Manual gives LESCO 30 days in total to put a meter on your wall.
That is the whole machine. This guide walks through each moving part for applicants in Lahore, Kasur, Sheikhupura, Okara and Nankana Sahib: exactly which documents to prepare, what the demand notice really costs, whether you need single-phase or three-phase, and what to do when the file stops moving. If you are on another DISCO, the process is nearly identical nationwide; see our national ENC portal guide for the differences.
The process at a glance
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Where to apply | enc.com.pk (LESCO’s own site redirects here) or any LESCO sub-division office |
| Application fee | None. Forms are free; your first payment is the demand notice |
| Core documents | CNIC (applicant + witness), ownership proof, Rs 50 affidavit, wiring test report; map/NOC for urban houses and shops |
| Demand notice due | Within 10 days of a complete application (up to 15 kW) |
| Total time standard | 30 days for up to 15 kW, per NEPRA Consumer Service Manual (Revised 2025), Annexure III |
| Tracking | ENC portal > Track, with your tracking ID or CNIC |
| Help | LESCO hotline 118, SMS 8118, ccms@pitc.com.pk |
Before you apply: single-phase or 3-phase?
The load you declare on the form decides your meter, your tariff and part of your cost, so settle it first.
Single-phase covers the ordinary Pakistani house: lights, fans, fridge, washing machine, one or two inverter ACs. Most homes declare 2 to 4 kW. You stay on normal slab billing, where each month’s units decide your rate; the current slabs are in our LESCO per-unit price guide.
Three-phase becomes relevant when your sanctioned load reaches 5 kW. Two consequences follow, and both are written into the rules rather than left to the SDO’s mood:
- At 5 kW and above, time-of-use (TOU) billing is compulsory. Your meter records peak and off-peak units separately, and evening units cost more. The Consumer Service Manual goes further: if a single-phase meter’s recorded load approaches 5 kW, LESCO is required to serve notice and install a TOU meter. How the peak window works, and whether TOU helps or hurts you, is covered in our peak hours guide.
- Your security deposit and works estimate scale with kilowatts, so over-declaring load costs real money for capacity you never use.
Do not panic about transformer costs at household sizes. Under the manual, residential connections up to 20 kW are fed from the common distribution transformer in your street; a dedicated transformer only enters the picture above that, or when the local transformer has no spare capacity.
One more option worth knowing: a temporary connection for house construction. It runs for six months, extendable in three-month blocks, with the security deposit set at the estimated cost of the electricity you will consume. When the house is finished you can convert to a regular connection and the deposit is adjusted.
Documents for a LESCO new connection
This list comes from NEPRA’s Consumer Service Manual, Revised 2025 edition, the rulebook LESCO itself publishes on its website (its copy is dated November 2025).
| Document | Notes for LESCO applicants |
|---|---|
| Attested CNIC copy of applicant | Plus an attested CNIC copy of one witness |
| Ownership proof | Registry, fard from the patwari or land record centre, allotment letter or sale deed, as accepted by LESCO for your area |
| Affidavit on Rs 50 stamp paper | States that no connection existed at the premises before, that you will pay any old dues later discovered, and that you are not a defaulter of any DISCO |
| Wiring test report | Issued by the Electric Inspector or an authorised wiring contractor, so the house wiring must be complete before you apply |
| Approved map / site plan / NOC | Required for urban houses and shops; LESCO can relax it in rural areas where no civic-agency approval applies. Homes inside approved societies are exempt |
| Tenant papers (if renting) | Owner’s NOC, the owner’s CNIC copy, plus the owner’s own stamp-paper undertaking accepting responsibility if the tenant defaults |
| Company papers (if applicable) | Incorporation certificate, board resolution authorising a signatory, directors’ list with CNIC copies |
Three LESCO-specific notes. First, the affidavit is not a formality: if you turn out to be a defaulter on another connection, LESCO can disconnect you after a seven-day notice. Second, the map/NOC rule generates more rejections in Lahore than any other line item, because urban plots carved out of unapproved schemes cannot produce one; check before you pay a wiring contractor. Third, if the property has co-owners, bring their written no-objection along; ownership disputes freeze files indefinitely.
Blank specimens of the NOC and the stamp-paper undertakings, along with an Urdu copy of the procedure, are downloadable from the ENC portal’s home page.
How to apply online: step by step
- Open enc.com.pk and select Apply (Apply New Connection). LESCO’s own website’s “Electricity New Connection” menu lands on the same portal, so there is exactly one front door. IESCO and FESCO run separate portals of their own and MEPCO uses its own apps, which is why Lahore guides and Multan guides look different.
- Choose LESCO as the company and pick the category you are applying under: domestic, commercial, industrial, agricultural or temporary supply.
- Fill in the form: name, father’s name, CNIC without dashes, mobile number, premises address, tariff category and the load you are requesting in kW. Declare load honestly; the wiring test report has to back it up.
- Upload scans of the documents from the table above.
- Submit and save your tracking ID. The portal issues an acknowledgement with a serial number; the manual obliges LESCO to tell you (by letter, email, phone or through the portal) if anything is missing rather than sitting on the file.
- Site survey. A LESCO surveyor checks whether supply is feasible at your premises and whether the street transformer has capacity. For connections up to 15 kW the registration, survey and test-report verification are budgeted 4 days.
- Demand notice issued. Cost estimate preparation and issuance get another 6 days, which is why a complete Category-1 application must produce a demand notice by day 10. You can also print it yourself from the portal’s Print DN option using your tracking ID.
- Pay the demand notice (details in the next section), then upload or deposit the paid receipt so the payment registers against your file. The portal has an Upload DN option for exactly this.
- Works order and material. LESCO issues the service connection order, draws cable, poles and hardware from stores, and executes the work: 11 days in the standard for small connections.
- Meter installation. The final 9 days cover installing your new meter and energising the connection. The meter is supplied at your cost through the estimate; the upside, fixed in the manual, is that no monthly meter rent can be charged afterwards.
Prefer paper? The identical form is free at your sub-division office, and staff are required to help you fill it. Everything else, including the deadlines, works the same.
What a LESCO new connection costs
There is no flat LESCO connection fee. Ignore the single-figure “new meter price” quoted on unofficial bill-checking sites; no such number exists in any official schedule. Your demand notice is built case by case from two stacks:
1. Capital cost / connection charges. The actual material needed to connect your premises (service cable, hardware, the meter itself), priced at store issue rates plus 12% store handling, plus 8% installation charges. A house next to an existing pole needs very little; a plot far from the line needs more. The manual requires LESCO to attach the complete itemised estimate to the demand notice, so if yours arrives as a bare total, ask for the bill of quantities; you are entitled to it.
2. Security deposit. Refundable, payable per kilowatt of sanctioned load, at rates fixed in Annexure IV of the Consumer Service Manual (Revised 2025):
| Consumer class | Security deposit |
|---|---|
| Residential (A-1), urban | Rs 1,220 per kW |
| Residential (A-1), rural | Rs 610 per kW |
| Commercial (A-2), urban | Rs 1,810 per kW |
| Commercial (A-2), rural | Rs 920 per kW |
| Industrial (B-1) | Rs 1,580 per kW |
| Agricultural tube-well (D) | Rs 15,000 lump sum |
So a 4 kW urban house in Lahore puts down Rs 4,880 as its deposit; the works estimate on top depends entirely on your street. Two protections are worth memorising. If material prices rise while LESCO is still inside its installation window, residential applicants up to 20 kW and commercial applicants up to 15 kW cannot be charged escalation. And you may request payment of the demand notice in installments, on which the manual forbids any mark-up.
Once the meter starts spinning, your monthly cost is a different subject: run your expected units through the LESCO bill calculator to see the full bill with taxes before your first one lands.
Paying the demand notice
The demand notice reaches you by registered post, courier or through the portal, and you can collect or print it yourself with your tracking ID. From issuance you have 30 days to pay, and you can get one 30-day grace extension if you request it at least three days before the deadline. Let it lapse and the file dies; you start over.
Where to pay:
- Designated bank branches. The notice itself names the banks authorised to collect it and the due date. Deposit there, keep the stamped receipt, and hand a copy to the sub-division or push it through the portal’s Upload DN screen so your payment is registered.
- Online through the ENC portal, via the Pay DN option, where the online payment facility is live for your case. If the option does not appear for your application, the bank counter always works.
Payment is the pivot of the whole process: your final priority number for connection is assigned only after the demand notice is paid, and LESCO’s remaining deadlines count from full payment.
How long it really takes
The current standard, from Annexure III of NEPRA’s Consumer Service Manual (Revised 2025):
| Category | Load | Sanctioning officer | Standard time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Up to 15 kW | SDO / AM | 30 days |
| 2 | Above 15 up to 70 kW | XEN / DM | 44 days |
| 3 | Above 70 up to 500 kW | SE / Manager | 58 days |
| 4 | Above 500 up to 5,000 kW (11/33 kV) | CEO | 106 days |
| 5 | 66 kV and above | CEO | 496 days |
These figures are for individual connections. If you see different day counts elsewhere, check which edition of the manual the guide is quoting; the Revised 2025 CSM is the one in force, and LESCO hosts the identical document on its own website.
Now the honest part. These clocks run from a complete application: the survey step already assumes your wiring test report is in the file, and every missing document pauses everything without technically breaching the standard. Where LESCO applications genuinely stall, it is usually the demand notice sitting unpaid, an overloaded street transformer that needs augmentation on cost-deposit basis, or material shortages at the divisional store. The manual does give you a lever: for every day beyond the standard, LESCO must record its reasons in writing to you, with a copy to NEPRA, and the delay does not cancel its obligation to connect you. Asking your SDO, politely and in writing, for those recorded reasons has a way of reviving sleepy files.
Tracking your application and who to contact
Track online: ENC portal > Track, select “New Connection”, company LESCO, then enter either your tracking ID or your CNIC without dashes. The same screen serves name, load and tariff-change cases.
LESCO’s live contact channels (from lesco.gov.pk): hotline 118, SMS 8118, email ccms@pitc.com.pk. For sitting across a desk from a human, LESCO runs customer service centres, with the full list on its CS Centers page:
| Centre | Address | Phone |
|---|---|---|
| Central CSC, LESCO HQ | 22-A Queens Road, Lahore | 042-99205248 |
| Northern Circle | Ravi Road, Lahore | 042-99205076 |
| Southern Circle | Ghazi Road, Defence, Lahore | 042-99264305 |
| Eastern Circle | WAPDA Road, Shalamar Town, Lahore | 042-99250044 |
| Okara | Baynazir Road, 132 KV Grid, Okara | 044-2527440-1 |
| Sheikhupura | LESCO Complex, near Regal Chowk, Sargodha Road | 056-9200204-05 |
| Kasur | WAPDA Colony, Khem Karan Road, Kasur | 049-9239166 |
LESCO’s list shows no separate centre for Nankana Sahib; Sheikhupura is the closest listed office. If a complaint about your application goes nowhere at the sub-division, our electricity complaint helplines guide maps the escalation ladder from SDO up to NEPRA’s consumer affairs office.
Why applications get rejected or stuck
- Incomplete documents. The most common cause by far. LESCO must inform you what is missing, but the clock effectively restarts when you supply it.
- No approvable map or NOC. Urban houses and shops need one unless an exemption applies. Plots in unapproved schemes hit this wall; homes inside approved societies are exempt by rule.
- Ownership disputes. Contested inheritance, missing fard, or co-owners who refuse consent. LESCO will not arbitrate; it simply parks the file.
- Old dues on the premises. Your affidavit binds you to pay any previously undiscovered arrears, and in practice a sub-division will not move a new file while a theft detection bill against the premises sits unpaid.
- Transformer capacity. If the street transformer is full, your connection may wait for augmentation, or you may be offered capacity on cost-deposit or sharing-charge terms.
- Failed or mismatched wiring test. The declared load must match what the Electric Inspector’s report supports.
- Expired demand notice. Thirty days, one extension. After that, a fresh application.
- Court restraining orders. Some areas carry blanket orders against new connections; LESCO is required to check before energising.
If LESCO concludes it cannot serve your premises at all, the manual requires it to return your application with written reasons within the same window it had for issuing a demand notice.
From kunda to a legal meter
If the premises currently runs on a kunda, the legal route is simply the process above: a normal ENC application, with your Rs 50 affidavit covering any dues later found against the address. There is no published amnesty or regularisation scheme in force as of August 2026, so be wary of anyone offering to “convert” a kunda for a fee outside official channels. Where a theft case or detection bill already exists against the premises, expect to settle it at the sub-division before the new file moves. Given that theft raids in LESCO’s divisions are now routine news, a metered connection with a paid demand notice is the cheaper path in every month after the first.
After the meter goes in
Three small chores finish the job properly. Register your CNIC and mobile number against the new reference number (LESCO’s site has a CNIC registration option) so bills and SMS alerts reach you. Learn to pull your bill online the moment the first one is issued; our LESCO bill check guide shows how, and if you have not received the printed bill yet you can still find it without the reference number. And set up how you will pay the LESCO bill online so the first due date never slips past you.
Applying for a connection under a different company? The same portal serves GEPCO, PESCO, HESCO, SEPCO, QESCO and TESCO, and our all-DISCOs hub links the bill and connection guides for every company in Pakistan.
FAQs
How much does a LESCO new connection cost in 2026?
There is no fixed fee. Your demand notice adds two amounts: the actual cost of material and works for your premises (material at store rates plus 12% store handling plus 8% installation charges) and a refundable security deposit of Rs 1,220 per kW for urban homes or Rs 610 per kW for rural homes. A 4 kW urban house therefore deposits Rs 4,880 as security, while the works portion depends on how far your premises is from the existing line.
How long does a LESCO new connection take?
NEPRA’s Consumer Service Manual (Revised 2025) allows 30 days in total for connections up to 15 kW, counted on a complete application: demand notice within 10 days, works order and material within the next 11, and meter installation in the final 9. Larger connections get 44 days (up to 70 kW) or 58 days (up to 500 kW). If LESCO exceeds the standard, it must give you day-by-day written reasons with a copy to NEPRA.
Can I apply for a LESCO connection as a tenant?
Yes. Along with the standard documents you need the owner’s no-objection certificate, an attested copy of the owner’s CNIC, and the owner’s undertaking on Rs 50 stamp paper accepting responsibility for your unpaid bills. The owner can also have the connection disconnected if the tenant defaults for three consecutive months.
What is a LESCO demand notice and how long is it valid?
The demand notice is LESCO’s payment demand covering your connection’s capital cost and security deposit, issued after the site survey. It is valid for 30 days, and you can request one 30-day grace extension at least three days before it expires. You can print it from the ENC portal with your tracking ID and pay at the designated banks named on the notice, or online where the Pay DN facility is enabled. If it lapses unpaid, you must apply again.
Do I need a 3-phase connection for my new LESCO meter?
Only if your sanctioned load is 5 kW or more, which typically means several non-inverter ACs, a tube-well or workshop machinery. At 5 kW and above, time-of-use billing becomes compulsory, so evening units cost more than daytime units. Most houses declare 2 to 4 kW and stay on an ordinary single-phase meter with slab billing.
How do I check my LESCO new connection application status?
Open enc.com.pk, choose Track, select New Connection and LESCO, then enter your tracking ID or your CNIC without dashes. The portal shows the stage your file has reached. For queries the live LESCO channels are hotline 118, SMS 8118 and ccms@pitc.com.pk, or any LESCO customer service centre in person.
Can I get a temporary LESCO connection for construction?
Yes. A construction connection is granted for six months initially and can be extended in three-month blocks until the project finishes. The security deposit equals the estimated cost of electricity you will use during the period, and it is refunded on disconnection or adjusted if you convert the temporary connection into a regular one.