The High Court of Karnataka on Thursday imposed a cost of ₹50,000 on two petitioners for filling a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petition, by abusing the process of law, to challenge the State government’s direction to all electricity supply companies (Escoms) on the mode and the method for generating electricity bill for April owing to the lockdown.
A special Division Bench, comprising Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice B.V. Nagarathna, passed the order on the petition by P.C. Rao and K. Ganesh Nayak, residents of Bengaluru.
The Bench directed the petitioners to pay the cost to the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund, Covid-19.
It held that the petitioners abused the process of law as they filed the petition within a few hours after submitting a representation before the government on April 8 by using e-filling process enabled only for cases of urgency.
There is no public interest involved in the petition, the Bench observed.
However, the Bench said that its order will not bar the government from considering their representation, while observing that the issue of non-availability of food and shelters is important for the court now
The government, in its April 3, 2020 circular, asked Escoms to collect energy consumption charges for April by raising an average bill or the previous month’s bill in the system, and had also set down guidelines for sending bills through electronic modes to consumers.
However, the petitioners had contended that the government had no power to issue such directions as the power vests with the Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Authority.
