The Madras High Court Bench here has batted in favour of the tariff fixed by the State government and Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation (TANGEDCO) for consumption of electricity by domestic consumers by charging less for those who consume less amount of power and collecting more money from others. Dismissing a public interest litigation petition filed by a third year student of Government Law College here, who claimed to have filed the case espousing the cause of power consumers in the State, a Division Bench of Justices Nooty Ramamohana Rao and S.S. Sundar said: “The writ petition, in our opinion, is a misconceived one. “The State government in consultation with TANGEDCO has been coming up with schemes duly fixing the slab rates of consumption charges for electrical energy at a reasonable tariff, to the extent possible, while simultaneously keeping a careful eye on the economic conditions and the financial stability of the corporation.
“Hence, various slabs of tariffs are prescribed. These slabs are designed to encourage people to consume electric energy prudently. Therefore, such of those consumers who consume relatively less electric energy are sought to be rewarded by charging them at proportionately less rate of tariff than those who consume electric energy in more quantity.”
Also supporting the bimonthly billing cycle followed by TANGEDCO, the judges said that the corporation had not chosen to bill the consumers every month in order to utilise the scarce human resource available with it productively. They said that the bimonthly billing system helps in easy accomplishment of billing, collection and accounting works.
“By adopting bi-monthly facilities, at best, only six bills will be generated in a year with respect to every consumer and collection of revenue also becomes hassle-free. More importantly, if some of the consumers have not paid one or more bills, it becomes easier to detect those who had defaulted... and impose penalty on such consumers,” the Bench observed.
‘The slabs have
been designed to
encourage
people to use
electricity prudently’
