Draft first, then final: the previous publication rule the Kerala High Court made the State power regulator follow

Background

What a power consumer in Keralam pays is settled not by the electricity board but by a regulator, and that regulator's rule-making has limits. In a case about the Master Trust, the pension fund for employees of the Kerala State Electricity Board, the Kerala High Court struck down Regulation 34 (iv) of the tariff regulations framed by the Kerala State Electricity Regulatory Commission, to the extent that it did not conform to the published draft. The draft had allowed only the interest on the bonds that fund the trust to be counted in the Aggregate Revenue Requirement, or ARR. The final regulations also counted repayment of the principal on those bonds, a cost that would have reached consumers. The Court held that a change foreign to the draft, as against one incidental or ancillary to it, needed a fresh round of publication. Section 181(3) of the Act makes every regulation of the Commission subject to previous publication, and rules of 2005 lay down how that is done. The Commission may still specify terms for principal repayment, but only after it follows that procedure. With the provision gone to that extent, tariff fell by 17 paise per unit, on a challenge by an association of industrial consumers on high tension and extra high tension supply and two others.