Cuttack, May 14: The ball is now in Orissa Electricity Regulatory Commission (OERC)’s court with the high court directing it to dispose off state government’s review petition on revised power tariff before the PILs challenging power tariff hike are taken up for further hearing on June 20.

Earlier, on May 31, Orissa High Court had imposed restrictions on collection of the revised tariff from the consumers by way of an interim stay order.

However, the high court had since not completed adjudication on the PILs.

The commission, on the other hand, had questioned maintainability of the PILs on the ground that there was an Appellate Tribunal for Electricity against an order passed by it.

The commission had contended that the high court had limited power to intervene in respect of the electricity tariff.

Spelling out implications of the high court’s interim stay order, the commission had claimed that it would lead to loadshedding in the state.

The commission had also said that increase in electricity purchase cost was primarily linked to increase in cost of fuel, transportation and other incidental costs.

“There is no option but to pass on these costs to the consumers like in the case of petrol, diesel and kerosene,” the commission had contended in an affidavit.

The Orissa government questioned maintainability of the PILs in an affidavit on May 9, but informed the high court that it had filed a review petition before the commission a month ago as “the steep hike in retail supply tariff applicable for domestic consumers has created an upheaval among the domestic consumers which, in fact, has resulted in a tariff shock to them”.

Taking note of it, Justice B.P. Das and Justice B.K. Misra, in an interim order, has set June 19 as deadline for the commission to dispose off the Orissa government’s review petition.

On May 5, the division bench took up the PILs for hearing after Chief Justice V. Gopala Gowda had withdrawn from adjudicating on the PILs.

Earlier, the division bench of Chief Justice V. Gopal Gowda and Justice B.N. Mohapatra had closed hearing on maintainability of the PILs and reserved judgment on the issue.

The Orissa government had, in its review petition, contended that the domestic consumers consuming electricity between the newly introduced slabs of 50 units and 200 units per month have been worst hit as the rise in tariff in this case, has been one of the highest.

“The existing tariff of 140 paise per unit has been raised to 350 paise per unit. Therefore, the government is concerned for the domestic consumers who form 67 per cent of the electricity consumer base in Orissa,” the Orissa government contended.