After the High Court quashed the plea of the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for CAG audit of Delhi’s discoms, the Capital now stares at the possibility of a tariff hike in the coming financial year.
While not raising the tariffs this year, the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) had repeatedly referred to the ongoing CAG audit as one of the reasons behind the decision. But now that the audit’s relevance has been struck down by the HC, discoms are expected to approach the regulator stating considerable rise in their annual revenue requirements.
While power experts primarily seemed unhappy over the court order, many feared that the decision was likely to create more avenues for the distribution companies to continue with the manipulations in their accounts. “Creating a fear among private companies was the major aim of the audit. But the order has only made the discoms more powerful and they are thumping their chests saying their stand remains vindicated. People must brace, for there will be no invisible binding on the discoms to act transparently,” said an expert on condition of anonymity.
Senior lawyer Prashant Bhushan took to Twitter to express his disappointment on the issue. He tweeted, “SC says Telco accts be audited by CAG since govt gets1-5%.HC says CAG audit not for Discoms tho govt owns 49% & gave1000s Cr to them.Absurd!”
This was further followed by another tweet which said, “HC says CAG can't audit discoms since it's DERCs job. But DERC asked for CAG audit since discoms were fudging accts. Need to audit HC judges.”
At the same time, there are several who are looking up to the Arvind Kejriwal led Delhi government to approach the Supreme Court on the matter.Reacting to the order, DERC chief PD Sudhakar said, “It’s a court case between the Delhi government and the discoms. Our job is to fix tariffs and ensure transparency and zero-corruption among any of the stakeholders which we do in the form of a variety of audits.”
