Higher power bill: HC not to review relief to Tangedco

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court on Wednesday dismissed a revision petition filed against the dismissal of a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) accusing Tangedco of following a wrong methodology in calculating domestic electricity charges during the complete lockdown.

A division bench comprising Justice MM Sundresh and Justice R Hemalatha, on pointing out that all the 15 grounds based on which a review was sought are a repetition of the same contentions, said: “There is no other grievance expressed by any of the consumers other than the petitioner against the methodology adopted, before us. In this regard, the statement made by the Tangedco counsel that a substantial number of consumers have already paid the electricity charges, without any demur, also requires to be kept in mind.”

Also, on noting that the issue was regarding the reduction of consumed units instead of the last billing amount paid due to the non-reading of the electricity meters for one bi-monthly cycle, the bench led by Justice Sundresh said: “Tangedco had used a methodology of dividing the total consumed units for two bi-monthly period by two and thereafter reducing the amount paid by individual consumers for the first bi-monthly period.”

“Since there was no reading for the first bi-monthly period, the customers were asked to pay the previous bill amount. In this methodology, care was also taken to extend the subsidy of 100 units per bi-monthly cycle and then arrive at the bill. Even earlier to this pandemic situation, when a house was locked and the meter became inaccessible for noting down the reading, the consumer was asked to pay the previous bill amount which was to be adjusted in the actual bill after the reading,” the bench added.

Advocate Kabilan Manoharan, appearing for petitioner ML Ravi, contended that as per the various illustrations furnished by Tangedco for different consumers, depending upon the consumed units, it was found that in all the cases the methodology adopted by Tangedco caused loss to all the consumers.