IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Reserved on: 15.01.2025 Pronounced on: 28.02.2025 PUNJAB STATE POWER CORPORATION LIMITED -PETITIONER V/S STATE OF PUNJAB AND OTHERS -RESPONDENTS CORAM: HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE KULDEEP TIWARI Present: Mr. G.S. Sethi, Advocate for the petitioner.

Mr. Sahil R. Bakshi, A.A.G., Punjab.

Mr. Divyadeep Walia, Advocate for the respondent No.5.

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KULDEEP TIWARI, J. (ORAL)

1. The prayer clothed in the instant writ petition appertains to setting aside the order dated 06.01.2017 (Annexure P-5), wherethrough, the appeal preferred by the respondent No.5 against the order dated 09.09.2016 of the Forum for Redressal of Grievances of Consumers (hereinafter referred to as the ‘Forum’) has been allowed by the respondent No.2-Ombudsman. Moreover, the impugned order also carries directions for the petitioner to recalculate the demand, as per the hereinafter reproduced directions embodied in the concluding paragraph thereof, and, to recover/refund from/to the respondent No.5 the amount excess/short, after adjustment, if any, with interest under the provisions of ESIM-114.

“As a sequel of above discussions, now, it is an established fact that during checking of the meter by Enforcement, the Auto Display of the meter was defective and M/s L&T Ltd. on the basis of DDL declared the RTC of the meter as defective, meaning thereby that the meter was defective and I do not find any weightage in the view point of the Forum that reading was accumulated and no investigation report or justification of higher consumption was found on record except accumulation of reading. Thus, I have no hesitation to set aside the decision dated 09.09.2016 of CGRF in Case no: CG-63 of 2016. Though, the billing from the month of 07 / 2015 upto 09.12.2015 (the replacement of the defective meter) is required to be done as per provisions contained in Regulation 21.5.2 (a) of Supply Code - 2014 i.e on the basis of energy consumption of corresponding period of previous year but due to non-availability of the consumption for the months of 07 & 08 / 2014, being the connection released on 23.08.2014, the account of the Petitioner for the disputed period should be overhauled as per provisions contained in Reg. 21.5.2 (b) of Supply Code - 2014 on the basis of average consumption of previous six months prior to occurrence of default (average of consumption recorded from Jan. 2015 to dare, 2015, which comes to be 6281 units / month being default occurrence month July 2015).”

2. Before embarking upon the process of evaluating the validity of the impugned order (Annexure P-5) and penning down any opinion upon the instant writ petition, it is deemed apt to initially capture a concise and compendious backdrop of the case at hand.

FACTUAL MATRIX

3. The respondent No.5 is running an industrial unit for manufacturing of fasteners and machine components. For running its manufacturing business, the respondent No.5 obtained electricity connection bearing Account No.MS-33/0254, with sanctioned load of

90.500 KW, under Commercial Sub Division Rajpura.

4. The energy meter of the respondent No.5 was checked by the Additional Superintending Engineer, Enforcement-I, PSPCL, Patiala, vide ECR No. 36/280 dated 08.12.2015. The checking officer reported that “C- open” was appearing on the display of the meter, hence he issued directions to replace the meter immediately and to bring the same to M.E. Lab for further checking and for taking DDL. Resultantly, the meter of the respondent No.5 was replaced on 09.12.2015. On 09.12.2015 itself, the meter was checked in the M.E. Lab in the presence of representative of the respondent No.5, however, since the DDL of the meter could not be extracted, therefore, the meter was again seal packed. Thereafter, the meter was again checked on 21.12.2015 vide Challan No.35, in the presence of representative of the respondent No.5 and Engineer of the manufacturer, i.e. M/s L&T Limited, and, DDL was successfully extracted. On the basis of t