The Board's duty to supply electricity under Section 18(b) of the Electricity Supply Act, 1948, imposed an obligation on the Board to supply stepped-down electrical power that could be used by its customers commercially.

ORDER :- The Andhra Pradesh State Electricity Board issued B.P. Ms. No. 607, Commercial, dated 21st of July, 1981. The validity of those proceedings is now assailed in this batch of writ petitions by several industrial concerns. The facts that give rise to this litigation are common to all the writ petitions and the questions of law that call for adjudication are also substantially the same. The facts in one case are almost similar to the facts in any other case. It is not, therefore, necessary to refer to the facts in each individual case separately. I, therefore, set out the facts in writ petition No. 1655/82 filed by the Andhra Cement Limited, Vijayawada.

2. The Andhra Pradesh State Government acting under the Electricity Supply Act, 1948 (hereinafter called 'the Supply Act') constituted the Andhra Pradesh State Electricity Board (hereinafter called 'the Board'). The Board so constituted in law is a statutory corporation. It is a State authority conferred with statutory powers that empower it to produce electricity and distribute the same. The Supply Act created the Board with monopoly powers with necessary authority to generate and distribute electricity in the State to the exclusion of others. Ss.18 and 49 of the above Supply Act are particularly material for considering the tenability of the rival claims advanced by the parties in these cases. S.18 of the Supply Act charges the Board, inter alia, with duty to supply electricity to licensees and other persons requiring supply of electricity. Acting in obedience to that statutory duty the Board has been supplying electricity to all its customers, including the petitioner-company. In discharging its duty of supplying electrical power to consumers imposed by S.18, the Board is empowered by S.49 of the Supply Act to impose such terms and conditions as it may think fit. Various agreements concluded from time to time between the petitioner-company on the one hand and the Board on the other witness those terms and conditions. The last of such agreement entered into between the Board and the petitioner is of 12th Sept. 1976. That agreement is valid for a period of five years only, but can go on even beyond unless rescinded by the parties. Under the above agreement which is currently in force, the Board undertook to supply the petitioner-company electrical power at the contracted demand of 5000 KVA. It is necessary to note the method adopted by the Board in supplying the power. The Board generates electrical power at a low voltage and steps up such power at the generating point itself to high voltage and then transmits it over long distances to the distributing points where once again it steps down the electrical power before it supplies the electrical power to its customers. This whole process of stepping up, transmission and stepping down is treated as a part of the Board's indivisible duty to supply electricity under S.18(b) of the Supply Act. This process of stepping up and stepping down is a technical necessity and forms an essential part of the supply process, and must therefore be

accepted for the purpose of this discussion as datum. Treating this entire process of stepping up and stepping down as a part of its statutory duty to supply electricity, the Board is supplying electricity to the petitioner. For the purpose of supplying electricity to the petitioner, the Board has erected 11 K.V. transformer. The 11 KV transformers so erected by the Board step down the high voltage electrical power transmitted by it from the generating point to the low levels of intensity as required by the petitioner-company. It is necessary to emphasise the fact that the electrical power as transmitted by the Board at high voltage is incapable of being used by the petitioner-Company without subjecting it to the above process of stepping down. In other words, the act of supplying electricity by the Board to be commercially useful to the petitioner-company cannot be performed by the Board