Court No. - 40
Case :- WRIT - C No. - 44717 of 2016 Petitioner :- Smt. Vandana Respondent :- U.P.P.C.L. And 3 Others Counsel for Petitioner :- Arvind Kumar Singh Counsel for Respondent :- C.S.C.,Baleshwar Chaturvedi
Hon'ble Amreshwar Pratap Sahi,J. Hon'ble Shashi Kant,J.
Heard Sri Arvind Kumar Singh, learned counsel for the petitioner and Sri A.N.Singh, Advocate, holding brief of Sri Baleshwar Chaturvedi, learned counsel for the respondents.
A counter affidavit has been filed on behalf of the respondents to which a rejoinder affidavit has also been filed today by the petitioner.
The sole grievance of the petitioner is that the petitioner had paid the entire bill whereafter permanent disconnection was allowed and the bills were cleared off. However, a no dues certificate was not given whereafter the impugned recovery citation for a sum of Rs.75,212/- plus other expenses has been issued.
The Court had called upon the respondents to file a counter affidavit and in paragraphs 3 and 3(a) of the counter affidavit it has been stated that the petitioner had approached the Consumer Grievance Redressal Forum and has also filed this writ petition, but, the fact remains that the payment of bill made by the petitioner was of defective meter reading and, therefore, actual consumption charges had not been realized from the petitioner at the time of permanent disconnection. Consequently, the impugned recovery citation has been issued.
From the counter affidavit we do not find any procedure having been followed by giving a notice to the petitioner in respect of the final assessment of the defective bill on the basis whereof permanent disconnection was carried out. In such circumstances, the recovery appears to be clearly in violation of principles of natural justice. The respondents could not have proceeded to issue recovery certificate without following the procedure prescribed in law and without finalizing the billing dispute for which the Executive Engineer is empowered to do in terms of Indian Electricity Act, 2005.
Consequently, we quash the recovery citation dated 19.8.2016 (Annexure 9 to the writ petition).
It shall be open to the Executive Engineer - respondent no.2 to proceed to pass an appropriate order in accordance with law after putting the petitioner to notice and then finalizing her objections.
The writ petition is accordingly allowed.
Order Date :- 24.4.2018 KA