The High Court of Karnataka has upheld the back billing charge of around ₹2.1 crore levied on Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), a deemed to be university, and its allied institutes for the “unauthorised use of electricity” between 2006 and 2013 contrary to the norms of the Mangalore Electricity Supply Company Ltd. (Mescom).
Justice Krishna S. Dixit passed the order while dismissing the petitions filed by MAHE, TMA Pai Hospital and Research Centre/Kasturba Medical College and Hospital, Manipal College of Dental Sciences, and Manipal School, all located at Attavar locality in Mangaluru.
Undertaking
Mescom had stated that the petitioners had secured enhanced high-tension power supply in 2005–06 by giving an undertaking that the power supply would not be extended to the new dental college building and that the enhanced power supply was required for the existing building without addition to plinth. However, on inspection during 2013, it was found that the petitioners unilaterally carried the power supply through their own cables to the other buildings without permission from Mescom.
The petitioners claimed that extension of power supply to the new building does not require permission as all the buildings are on the same “premises”.
Not accepted
The court, however, declined to accept the claim while holding that power supply was “purpose and building specific” and it was not a wholesale supply to the “premises” as such and to all structures erected on the “premises”. Also, the court said that action of the petitioners in extending power supply to new buildings was contrary to their undertaking.
On the petitioner’s claim that there was absolutely no material to show that power was unauthorisedly used from August 2006 to December 2013, the Bench said nothing prohibited the petitioners, during the two opportunity of hearings given to them, from producing materials on when the new structures, in respect of which unauthorised use of power is alleged, were built.
‘No benefit of doubt’
“... the petitioners are not persons from rural areas, depressed classes or otherwise disabled; they are a reputed ‘deemed to be university’ and the famous institutions run by it; several law reports bear testimony to this; therefore, they cannot seek refuge under the leaking umbrella of benefit of doubt,” the court observed.
Meanwhile, the court directed Mescom not to discontinue existing power supply if the petitioners paid the charges demanded, all and whatever interest or other levied, within two weeks.
