Nearly three weeks after the hike in power tariff was announced, the State’s power utility is yet to upload the entire tariff order on its website.
While the majority order written by two members of the regulatory commission that recommended an increase in power prices was put up last week, the dissenting order by the third member has been ignored.
“Any order issued by the commission has to be fully uploaded on the Tangedco website,” a regulatory commission official said. “The utility cannot selectively acknowledge only parts of the order that it likes. This is a complete violation,” the official said.
When TNERC inquired about the absence of the dissent note which argued against hike, there was no response from Tangedco, the official said. “It’s a sorry state of affairs if people have to go to court just to force the utility to follow official procedure,” he added. In response, senior Tangedco officials said “whatever is useful for the people” has been put up on the website and the dissent note is “only of academic interest”. “We will look into it,” they said.
Legal challenge Meanwhile,the legal challenges to the power tariff hike that came into effect on December 12 are likely to be heard before the Supreme Court next week. “Since the procedure adopted for the appointment of the TNERC chairman is under question, the tariff order will not stand if any violations are found,” a well-placed source said.
