DERC asked to reserve final order in BSES licence cancellation case

Commission issues notices to Reliance discoms to present their case on government's advice for revocation

The Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (ATE) on Wednesday asked the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) to reserve its final order on the city government’s request to cancel licences of Reliance Infrastructure’s power distribution companies.

The ATE order came in an ongoing hearing on interim applications (IAs) filed by BSES Yamuna and BSES Rajdhani last year, seeking directions to DERC to liquidate their regulatory assets to recover past dues from consumers. ATE, set up under the Electricity Act 2003, enjoys power to over-rule central and state power regulators.

The BSES counsel apprised ATE of DERC’s request to the two discoms to make presentations on Thursday on the Delhi government’s request for licence cancellation in case they threaten long power cuts. “The commission is directed not to pass the final order in the above proceedings without leave of the Tribunal during the pendency of these IAs,” the ATE Bench of M K Vinayagam and Rakesh Nath said in its order on Wednesday.

The Bench, however, allowed DERC to proceed in the matter by hearing the parties concerned and directed the two discoms to make their arguments on the Delhi government’s letter to DERC as scheduled. Delhi Power Secretary Puneet Goyal had on Monday advised DERC to revoke the licence of the BSES discoms if they fail to pay dues to NTPC and resort to long outages. DERC issued notices to the two discoms for presenting their case on the government’s proposal on revocation on Thursday.

NTPC had last week served notices to the BSES discoms, threatening suspension of power supply, arguing 2,000 Mw of electricity supply would be cut if they did not clear past dues by Tuesday. Earlier, the BSES discoms had said they lacked financial resources to buy power.

In a letter to Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung on Tuesday, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had said the state government should be ready to take over power distribution in the city to control the ‘ugly situation’. The discoms have slammed the proposed move to cancel licenses as ‘arbitrary and illegal’.