CUTTACK: A Permanent Lok Adalat is not competent to decide on a grievance over electricity bill issued to a consumer when the matter is pending before the Ombudsman, the Orissa High Court has ruled.
The court gave the ruling recently while considering a petition challenging the direction issued by Permanent Lok Adalat (Ganjam) to restore power supply to a consumer without claiming reconnection charges and without directing payment of arrear dues against him. The Lok Adalat had issued the order on April 4, 2015. A single-judge bench of Justice SK Panigrahi quashed the Permanent Lok Adalat’s order after nine years.
“It is clear that the Permanent Lok Adalat ought not to have taken cognisance of the complaint when the purported case was already pending in the Ombudsman II; out of the framework of the Electricity Act,” he observed.
Initially, when the crusher unit owner was charged with Rs 1,59,195 towards transformer loss in addition to electricity bill for the month of May 2014 by Southco he filed a complaint before the Grievance Redressal Forum (Berhampur). But on being directed to pay the amount, he challenged the order of the forum before the Ombudsman No-II, Bhubaneswar till decision of the main case.
Justice Panigrahi observed, “The Permanent Lok Adalat is not competent to maintain an application under section 22 of Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 against the pendency of the grievance redressal in the Ombudsman II.”