The Union government on Wednesday told a division bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Manmohan of the Delhi high court that the NCT government has no jurisdiction to direct the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) to put on hold its decision/ order on the issue of power tariff for the year 2010-2011.
Appearing before the court to assist the bench, attorney general (A-G) G.E. Vahanvati submitted that “under the Delhi Electricity Act, the state has no jurisdiction to pass such an order to the statutory function of the commission”.
The bench took note of the submission made by the senior lawyer and fixed the PIL for further hearing on December 22.
The bench was hearing a PIL seeking a direction to the Delhi government, allegedly succumbing to the pressure of Discoms to hike tariff. The petitioner, Nand Kishor Garg, claimed that the commission has fixed the hike of tariff to 40 per cent basing on the annual revenue return filed by the Discoms according to which the companies have generated a surplus amount of `3,577 crore.
The commission had approved the tariff for government to issue for this year but on May 1, the Discoms made a representation to the government seeking a hike of existing tariff from 50 to 70 per cent, Mr Garg said.
He further said the decision was taken by the commission but one of the three members was to sign on it in April this year. However, before its release, the state government intervened and stayed the approved tariff in May, which was illegal and arbitrary.
As per the PIL, the government withheld the approved tariff basing on the demand by Discoms for hike despite the fact that power distributing companies have generated a huge profit on an average of Rs 300 crore per month from consumers.