Court directs discoms to participate in exit conference

The Delhi High Court on Thursday asked capital's power distribution companies BSES Rajdhani and BSES Yamuna to participate in the CAG's exit conference.

The discoms had approached the court asking it to direct the government auditor not to proceed with its exit conference till they have been given an effective opportunity to participate in the audit process.

A division bench of Chief Justice G. Rohini and Justice R.S. Endlaw refused to stay the exit conference scheduled for October 12-14 where all the parties concerned participate in a discussion before the finalisation of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report.

"Post the matter for October 15. Meanwhile you (discoms) are going to participate in exit conference with whatever documents you have and if you face any difficulty (for not having all documents), we will hear the matter. The outcome of the exit conference will be brought to the notice to this court," it said.

Appearing for the discoms, senior advocate Kapil Sibal sought that they be provided with the detailed breakup of the alleged loss of over Rs.2,225 crore computed by the government auditor against along with the methodology of computation for such figures referred to in the draft audit report.

The court had earlier asked the state's Arvind Kejriwal government to give all the pages of CAG draft report to the discoms, after they alleged that they were not provided the full report which was given to Delhi government and the media.

In their fresh application, the discoms claimed that if they were not given a reasonable time to respond to the findings in the draft audit report, the entire exercise would not only be rendered fruitless but would also severely impair the results and findings arrived at in the final audit report.

"Such a final report would be based on incorrect and inaccurate assumption," it added.

The application was filed by them on their main petition in which they had challenged the Delhi government's decision to get the accounts of the companies audited by the official auditor, over which the high court had reserved its judgment on March 4.