Underlining that Delhi residents should not be inconvenienced, the
Supreme Court on Friday asked the National Thermal Power Corporation
(NTPC) not to snap supply to Reliance Group-owned discoms over
non-payment of dues until March 26.
As a pre-condition for continued supply, a bench of Justices S S
Nijjar and A K Sikri directed the BSES to pay Rs 50 crore to the NTPC
within two weeks, as a part payment of the total outstanding dues of
around Rs 300 crore.The bench perused the notice of disconnection issued by NTPC and
said, "This is not the right attitude to take... The consumer should not
suffer in all this." Besides the NTPC, the apex court also issued notices to the Centre,
the Delhi government and the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission,
asking them to respond to Reliance's plea within two weeks. It gave
another one week to the two companies to file their replies and fixed
the matter for hearing thereafter. "We are grateful to the Supreme Court for its intervention on our
petition, restraining NTPC from cutting power supply," the two companies
said in a statement. The discoms welcomed the court's directive to NTPC and urged the
Delhi government to adopt a "constructive approach to avoid "unnecessary
crises of this nature".
However, on the same day, while addressing a public gathering in the
capital, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said the two companies will be
"thrown out" of Delhi if they fail to improve their services. The NTPC
last week had issued notices to BSES Rajdhani and BSES Yamuna on the
issue of payment of security mechanism and non-payment of dues.BSES runs two companies that supply electricity to nearly 70 per cent
of Delhi. They reportedly owe around Rs 300 crore to the
power-generating company NTPC. The outstanding are for the power supply
in December, to be payable by the end of January. The Appellate Tribunal
for Electricity had directed DERC not to take a final decision on
revoking the licences of BSES discoms without its permission.
Source- Indian Express
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