The main legal point established in the judgment is the interpretation and application of the term 'independent feeder' in the context of electricity supply, as well as the rejection of the promissory estoppel argument against the surcharge.

Sudhanshu Dhulia, J.

All these writ petitions which are before this Court raise a challenge to orders dated 02.06.2006 and 28.02.2007 passed by the Consumer Grievances Redressal Forum, Dehradun (from hereinafter referred to as "CGRF") and Ombudsman, respectively, which have also been annexed to the writ petition as Annexure Nos. 2 and 1 respectively (in WPMS No.1091 of 2007).

2. Since these writ petitions raise a common challenge, all these writ petitions were heard together and are being decided by a common order, though purely for the sake of convenience for the factual aspect alone we refer to the Writ Petition No. 1091 of 2007 (M/S) i.e., M/s Kotdwar Steels Limited, which is the leading case.

3. The petitioners run factories where the nature of work is the same and can be described as "Arc Induction Furnace". In these factories iron scrap is melted and shaped into "steel ingots" which is the finished product. All the units are heavy consumers of electricity as each of these units has an extremely high sanction load which is about 2,000 KVA. Another indicating fact of this aspect is their maximum demand indicator or MDI (which is the proportion or the percentage of electricity which is being used by the Units as against its sanction load). These indicators show that these industries cannot survive except with regular supply of power.

4. Petitioner i.e., M/s Kotdwar Steels Limited in order to run its "Arc Induction Furnace" sought electricity connection vide its application dated 05.08.1996. The required load was sanctioned by the then U.P. State Electricity Board. Similarly, it was done in the case of remaining petitioners as well. Later the U.P. Regulatory Commission was established in the year 1999 which framed its first electricity tariff on 27.07.2000 which was effective from 09.08.2000.

5. The electricity tariff of 2000-2001 is essential to our discussion, as the rate of electricity as given in that tariff is an issue here. There are various components and categories to the above electricity tariff of 2000-2001, to which we need not go into as that not be relevant for our purposes, but what is relevant is that in this electricity tariff, two categories were opened for commercial consumers. First category is the one which was to consume power even during "restricted hours". For this category, there was to be a 15% of extra surcharge. The second category was for consumers who are getting power supply from an "independent feeder", emanating on 400/220/132 KV. For this second category of consumers, again 15% of extra surcharge was demanded. The second category was also given an assured minimum supply of 500 hours in a month and in case of shortfall in the guaranteed hours of supply (i.e., 500 hours per month), consumers were to be given a rebate at the rate of 1% per 10 hours. Presently we are concerned with the second category.

6. The U.P. Power Corporation later on a representation made by consumers passed a circular on 08.09.2000 whereby it declared that such consumers who do not require a guaranteed supply of minimum of 500 hours per month and who have given undertaking to this effect shall not be required to pay 15% of surcharge.

7. The background of the present litigation now take us to a case, namely, M/s LML Limited, Kanpur v. State of U.P. and others decided by the Hon'ble High Court of Judicature at Allahabad and later by the Hon'ble Supreme Court. Here the demand of 15% of surcharge was challenged by LML Limited in a writ petition before the High Court of Judicature at Allahabad, where two points were raised. Firstly, that the two categories of surcharge:- (a) for those consumers who consume electricity even during peak hours and (b) 15% of surcharge from such consumers who consume electricity on an independent feeder have to be seen together and this 15% of surcharge can only be levied if a consumer is consuming electricity not only during peak hours but is also supplied electricity through an independent feede