The Supreme Court on Friday said to the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC) that an extra surcharge of Rs 1.25 per unit imposed on consumer groups of captive power plants are not liable to pay.
MERC needs to refund the extra additional charge gathered from captive consumers like JSW. MERC is a governing body to control certain regulatory and safety functions in Maharashtra based in Mumbai.
A bench drove by Justice MR Shah while maintaining the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity‘s March 2019 choice said that the captive consumers/captive users are not responsible to pay the extra additional charge applied under Section 42(4) of the Electricity Act 2003, MERC.
The levy of an extra additional charge under sub-segment (4) of Section 42 can be defended as compensatory just where the state commission allows a customer or class of consumers to get a power supply from an individual other than the distribution licensee.
Its space is subject to an installment of extra additional charge on the charges of wheeling as might be indicated by the state commission to meet the proper expense of such dispersion licensee emerging out of his commitment to supply.
Customarily, a buyer or class of consumers gets power supply from the conveyance licensee in its supply area. Such long ways as captive consumers/captive users are concerned, no such authorization of the state commission is required, thus no extra additional charge is payable by them, the SC said.
Also stated that the captive consumers or users being a separate and distinct class without anyone else have likewise to cause the consumption of potentially put away the cash for developing, keeping up with or working a captive creating plant and committed transmission lines.
JSW Steel, JSW Energy, JSW Cement, and other group companies had filed a petition against MERC’s order in the Aptel, quoting that the Commission had overlooked the idea of non-biased open access as far as the Act just as National Electricity.
Policy which dispenses with rivalry and gives a stock of force straightforwardly to the consumers through open access. The council additionally held that there can’t be any differentiation between a singular captive buyer and group captive consumers or unique captive consumers and changed over captive consumers.
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