The Supreme Court on Friday sought responses from 15 states and two Union Territories regarding illegal vacancies in state power panels. The NGO Energy Watchdog filed the plea, noting that prolonged vacancies affect consumers. The court said, "Consumers' access to that remedy cannot be made dependent upon indefinite executive inaction."
The Supreme Court on Friday sought responses from 15 states and the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh on a PIL alleging that their state electricity regulatory commissions are not being constituted in line with the law. The petition was filed by NGO Energy Watchdog, which has sought directions to ensure compliance with the Electricity Act, 2003, and a Supreme Court ruling of April 2018 on the composition of these commissions.
A bench comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana issued notice on the plea, which was filed through lawyer Pranav Sachdeva. The petition said prolonged vacancies and the absence of a qualified legal member in several commissions were affecting consumers' access to lawful remedies.
According to the plea, there were several statutory infractions, including long-running vacancies in the posts of chairperson and members, and the complete absence of a person of law on the commission, across 230 SERCs in the 15 states and the UTs. It referred to the Supreme Court's 2018 ruling, which held that SERCs have the "trappings of the court" and must include a suitably qualified person of law as a member.
The petition said commissions in several states, including West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland, still do not have a person of law despite that ruling. It said that in Tamil Nadu, all three offices are vacant, while in Andhra Pradesh, the posts of chairperson and member (technical) are vacant, and the commission is functioning with only one member (finance). In West Bengal, the plea said, only the chairperson's office has been created, and the incumbent does not have the required legal background.
The NGO said this failure "strikes at consumers' access to justice" under Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution, and argued that without the required person of law, consumers cannot get lawful adjudication of complaints under the Electricity Act. "Consumers' access to that remedy cannot be made dependent upon indefinite executive inaction," the plea said.
The petition has sought directions to West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Kerala, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram and Sikkim, as well as Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, to disclose the steps taken to ensure that their SERCs are constituted in accordance with the Electricity Act. The court's notice now requires these states and UTs to respond to the plea.