Pulling up the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (Bescom) for causing unnecessary hardship to four prominent software companies by illegally demanding higher power tariff, the High Court of Karnataka observed that a “typical bureaucratic attitude” will definitely have an “impact of discouraging and dampening of the industries in the State.”
Holding Assistant Executive Engineers (Electrical) of four separate sub-divisions of the Bescom responsible for “casual, non-chalant and arbitrary attitude” on behalf of Bescom, the court directed these officers to pay damages of ₹25,000 each from their personal resources.
Justice Vineet Kothari passed the order while allowing petitions filed by Talisma Corporation Pvt Ltd, Cognizant Technology Solutions Pvt Ltd, Integra Micro Software Service Pvt Ltd and Oracle India Pvt Ltd.
The petitioner-companies started their operations in Bengaluru either during the late 1990s or early 2000, and they were given power connections by in the ‘industries’ category, which has a lower power tariff than ‘commercial’ category, under the Millennium Information Technology policy — 2000. However, during 2015-17, AEEs of sub-divisions — C2 (Malleswaram), C4 (Gandhinagar), S3 (Viveknagar) and S4 (Koramangala) had issued notices demanding lakhs of rupees as arrears from these companies merely beacuse they had obtained certificates from the IT & BT Department to the effect that they were entitled for power supply under ‘industries’ category, only a few years ago and prior to issuance of such certificates the companies were liable to pay tariff applicable for ‘commercial’ category. However, the court found that AEEs had demanded arrears even though the certificate issued by the IT and BT Department makes it clear that they were classified as “software development industries” from the year of their commencement of operation.
Observing that illegal action of the AEEs, sans approval from higher authorities, amounted to “reversal of State IT policy”, the court said “this even reflects badly on the internal working and hierarchical discipline of Bescom itself, where such policy decisions were also taken by the lower officials, perhaps even without the higher authorities being taken into confidence.”
