CHENNAI: Giving a quietus to the raging charges of ‘amplified’ power consumption charges by Tangedco for households for the lockdown months, the Madras high court has held that the billing had an ‘element of fairness.’ Dismissing a public interest writ petition against the billing method adopted by Tangedco, a division bench of Justice M M Sundresh and Justice R Hemalatha on Wednesday concurred with the submissions of additional advocate general P H Arvindh Pandian, and said: “Looking from any perspective, we do not find any valid reason to find the method adopted as arbitrary. It is sound in reasoning and has benefited the consumers.”
As meter reading could not be done for March, April, May and June due to Covid-19 scare and the lockdown, Tangedco did three things: One, it asked consumers to remit the previous month’s bill amount as provisional payment for March-April months; two, it treated the four months as one block and divided the total consumption into two equal bi-monthly readings before applying the relevant slab charges; and three, it said it would minus the first 100 units of free power from each bi-monthy bill, and then charge the consumer for the remaining consumed electricity after deducting the provisional amount already paid.
