Cuttack, May 4: Orissa High Court Chief Justice V. Gopala Gowda today withdrew from adjudicating on the PILs challenging the Orissa Electricity Regulatory Commission (OERC)’s order enhancing power tariff for 2011-2012 from April 1.

The chief justice expressed unwillingness without assigning any reason and issued directions for listing of the writ petitions tomorrow for further hearing before another bench.

The two-judge bench of Chief Justice V. Gopala Gowda and Justice B.N. Mohapatra had, on Monday, closed hearing on the maintainability of the PILs and reserved judgment.

Earlier on March 31, the two-judge bench of Justice B.P. Das and Justice B.K. Mishra imposed restrictions on collection of the revised tariff from the consumers by issuing an interim stay order on the OERC’s order after a preliminary hearing on a PIL filed by the Federation of Consumer Organisations, Orissa, the Keonjhar Navanirman Parishad and one consumer, Arun Kumar Sahoo.

Subsequently, the PIL was listed before the bench of Chief Justice V. Gopala Gowda and Justice B.N. Mohapatra for analogous hearing along with two other petitions filed by the Utkal Chamber of Commerce (UCC) representing 239 business houses in Orissa and the Rohit Ferrotech Ltd of Kalinganagar Industrial Complex.

As things stand today the OERC questioned maintainability of the PILs on the ground that there was an Appellate Tribunal for Electricity against an order passed by it.

The commission pointed out that the Supreme Court had held that scope of judicial review in a PIL under Article 226 of the Constitution in respect of tariff order is limited.