Consumer Complaint Not Maintainable Against Power Distributor For Raising Additional Bill Due To Short Assessment: Supreme Court

Consumer Complaint Not Maintainable Against Power Distributor For Raising Additional Bill Due To Short Assessment

Case: M/S Prem Cottex v Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam Ltd & Ors

Coram: Justice Hemant Gupta and Justice V Ramasubramanian

Case no.: Civil Appeal Number 7235 of 2009

Court Observation: “The raising of an additional demand in the form of “short assessment notice”, on the ground that in the bills raised during a particular period of time, the multiply factor was wrongly mentioned, cannot tantamount to deficiency in service. If a licensee discovers in the course of audit or otherwise that a consumer has been short billed, the licensee is certainly entitled to raise a demand. So long as the consumer does not dispute the correctness of the claim made by the licensee that there was short assessment, it is not open to the consumer to claim that there was any deficiency. This is why, the National Commission, in the impugned order correctly points out that it is a case of “escaped assessment” and not “deficiency in service”.

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