Madras High Court decides in favour of TANGEDCO (now TNDPCL) in a decade old litigation with revenue implications of around Rs. 700 crores.*

*Madras High Court decides in favour of TANGEDCO (now TNDPCL) in a decade old litigation with revenue implications of around Rs. 700 crores.*

Today, the Hon’ble Division Bench of Madras High Court comprising of Hon’ble Dr. Justice G. Jayachandran and Hon’ble Mr. Justice Mummineni Sudheer Kumar allowed a batch of over 100 writ appeals filed by TANGEDCO against an order of a Single Judge setting aside the demands raised by TANGEDCO on all HT industrial consumers towards demand charges.

In 2006, the Tamil Nadu State Electricity Commission provided for a concessional method of calculating demand called “deemed demand” for HT consumers having their own captive generating plants/ open access consumption but also drawing power from TANGEDCO. The TNERC subsequently withdrew this concession in 2012 since it was causing loss to TANGEDCO. However, claiming that they are still entitled to the said benefit, various HT customers filed writ petitions before the Madras High Court, which came to be allowed on 14.09.2018. Owing to the order, TANGEDCO could not collect approximately Rs. 700 crores from HT Consumers across the State towards demand charges from 2013 till date.

TANGEDCO had filed a batch of writ appeals before the Division Bench in 2018. As an interim measure, the Division Bench had ordered payment of 50% of the demand charges.

These writ appeals were allowed today by the Hon’ble Division Bench, setting aside the order of the Single Judge and directing the writ petitioners to pay the full demand charges (balance of ~Rs. 350 crores) within a period of three months.

Mr. P. Wilson, Sr. Adv. assisted by Mr. Arun appeared for TANGEDCO and Mr. Richardson Wilson, Advocate appeared for the Tamil Nadu Electricity Regulatory Commission.
Mr. Rahul Balaji and Mr. Parthasarathy Pandiaraj, Advocates appeared for the HT Consumers.