The regulation passed by the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) penalising distribution companies for unscheduled power cuts may not be implemented at all as the discoms have decided to take the case to the Supreme Court.
Sources have told The Hindu that the discoms have found the regulations “biased” as they do not hold authorities running the transmission and grid network, especially the Delhi Transco Limited (DTL), accountable.
The timing of the move is significant as the Capital has been witnessing major power cuts over the last two days owing to faults at the end of DTL, which is under the Delhi government.
More snags
Like Thursday, on Friday also parts of South and East Delhi faced outages due to snags in a 220-KV line of DTL and the Maharani Bagh 400-200 KV circuit operated by the Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd.
“Almost every day now, Delhiites are facing power cuts due to snags on the part of other stakeholders and not the discoms. Issues like failure in the grid, transmission network and the consumer’s own installation are beyond the control of the discoms. The monitoring body has to first determine the cause of failure,” said a discom official.
The DERC is yet to implement the policy as it does not have the infrastructure to monitor discoms constantly.
Speaking to The Hindu , DERC chief Krishna Saini said, “It is not in the power regulator’s purview to monitor power cuts of discoms as DERC is a quasi-judicial body. So, to address the issue of implementing the regulation we have decided to set up a special cell under the Electricity Ombudsman to perform the task.”
The power regulator on June 1 had appointed retired IAS officer Sundaram Krishna as the Electricity Ombudsman.
