Petition No.2 of 2005
Date of hearing: January 24,2005
Date of order: 3/2/2005
The petitioner has filed this petition for review of Tariff Order dated November 30, 2004 passed by the Commission for the financial year 2004-05.
Under Section 94 of the Electricity Act, 2003, the Commission, for the purpose of any enquiry or proceeding under the Act, has the same powers as vested in a Civil Court under the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 in respect of the matters listed in the Section and one of the matters listed is 'reviewing its decisions, directions and orders'. As such, the relevant provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure are applicable to the Review Petition. Under the Code of Civil Procedure, review can be entertained only if the conditions as listed in Order XLVII Rule 1 of Code are fulfilled.
The Commission noted that the petitioner has taken five grounds in his petition for review. None of these grounds provides adequate justification for entertaining the petition for review.
Regarding two part tariff and charging of contract demand charges and the rate thereof, the Commission has not yet implemented this tariff structure in its order in question. It has only directed the Board to come up with a detailed and well considered proposal on the issue. After receipt of such proposal from the Board, the same will obviously be put through the transparent process of inviting objections from the public. At that point of time, the petitioner will be given adequate opportunity to put forth his point of view with reference to specific proposal made by the Board.
Regarding cross-subsidy, the petitioner has indicated that the Commission has not specified the period of elimination of cross subsidy. It is noted that the Act does not itself specify the period within which the Commission has to specify the period in which the cross subsidies are to be eliminated. In any case, the issue will be taken up by the Commission while framing its Tariff Regulations or at the time of next Tariff Order. Further, cross subsidy in the system has decreased substantially after the issue of Tariff Order as brought out in Table 10.6 of the Tariff Order in question. In fact, the total cross subsidy in the system has reduced from 2.7% to 1.8% indicating a reduction of 0.9% or 33% of the cross subsidy level existing before the issue of the Tariff Order. Not only has the overall level of cross subsidy decreased substantially, the cross subsidy level for the consumer category to which the petitioner belongs namely industry has also decreased substantially. As such, the petitioner should not have any ground for being aggrieved by the Tariff Order. Slight increase in AP subsidy is a well considered decision of the Commission and has been dealt with in detail in para 10.5 of the Tariff Order.
Regarding non-matching of Government subsidy with the increase in agricultural consumption, the understanding of the consumer is incorrect. The Government subsidy has been calculated with reference to the enhanced agricultural consumption as assessed by the Commission. For this purpose, for the current year, the load growth of 5% over last year's actuals of connected load for AP sets has been taken into account. As such, there is no short recovery of Government subsidy as alleged by the petitioner.
Regarding petitioner's plea for installation of energy meters and request for direction on this account, the new Electricity Act, 2003 itself provides for mandatory installation of meters within two years of coming into force of the Act i.e. by June, 2005. As such, no separate direction from the Commission on the issue is called for. Regarding burdening the consumer with T&D losses, the issue is basically of the concept of cost of supply i.e. whether it should be the average cost or class-wise cost of supply which is to be taken as basis for determination of tariff. The issue has been considered in detail by the Commission and is covered under Tariff Order at length, under para 10.3 'Cross subsidy'. It is, therefore, not correct to say that the Tariff Order is silent on this aspect.
In view of all above, it is noted that no new matter or evidence has been brought out in the petition nor has the petitioner pointed out any error apparent on the face of the record or any other sufficient reason necessitating review of Tariff Order. The grounds for review filed by the petitioner are, therefore, not covered under the conditions as laid down in Order XLVII Rule 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure. The petition is, therefore, dismissed.