Calcutta, April 24: Power tariffs are set to rise soon with Calcutta High Court today staying for six weeks a single-judge bench’s order giving every single consumer a voice in rate revisions.

On March 29, Justice G.C. Gupta had stopped a scheduled hike from April 1 by ruling that the State Electricity Regulatory Commission must, before revising tariffs, hear the view of every consumer who wants to give his opinion.

A two-judge division bench passed the interim stay after commission counsel Pratik Dhar argued: “It is impossible to hear one crore consumers individually.”

The bench of Chief Justice V.S. Sirpurkar and Justice Soumitra Sen said it wanted to hear the matter in detail. “Whether the SERC is bound to hear consumers individually before fixing revised power tariff will be decided later.”

Power department officials said the commission would soon announce a state-wide tariff hike for 2006-2007.

Bengal has about 90 lakh electricity consumers, of whom 20 lakh are supplied by CESC and 53 lakh by the state electricity board. The rest are customers of the Durgapur Projects Limited, Damodar Valley Corporation and Dishergarh Power Supply Corporation.

In early March, a CESC consumer, Suresh Agarwal, had moved a petition before Justice Gupta claiming the commission had allowed the power utility services to raise rates from April without hearing consumers.

Agarwal had argued that the State Electricity Regulatory Commission Rules, 2003, flouted the Constitution by letting the commission fix tariff without taking into account individual consumers’ views and grievances.

Moving its appeal before the division bench, the commission said it heard out representatives of consumers’ bodies before every tariff revision.

The division bench asked Agarwal to reply by three weeks. The matter will be heard again after six weeks.