‘No 25% rebate in power tariff for Goa industries’

Panaji: Supreme Court on Friday upheld an order of the high court of Bombay at Goa, declining the grant of a 25% rebate to industries, according to a 1996 notification of Goa govt.

Supreme Court dismissed the appeals of the companies in the public interest. “In our opinion, public interest is what turns the tide against the appellant companies,” SC said in its judgment.

State of Goa, before the HC in the GR Ispat case, specifically took the stand that the policy of rebate was unviable, resulting from a financial crunch and was overriding public interest, the Supreme Court observed.

“Applying these principles to the instant case, we have no doubt in our minds that the HC was right in holding that the appellant companies before it are not entitled to the rebate and the impugned demand notices do not suffer from any vice, including that of illegality,” the said.

Goa govt issued a notification in Sep 1991 entitling industrial units, which applied for availing high tension or low tension power supply for bona fide industrial activities, to a 25% rebate on the tariff for a period of five years from the date the electricity supply was made available.

In 1995, it withdrew the 1991 notification and stopped the rebate, stating that any new industrial unit applying for power after March 31, 1995, would not get the benefit of the 1991 notification.

Supreme Court dismissed the petitions of the industries, upholding the HC observation that the companies were supplied power only from 1995 onwards and therefore none of them could claim to be covered by the 1991 notification.

The companies told the court that the rebate was offered for increasing investment and, based on this promise of rebate, they set up industries in Goa, obtaining loans from banks and financial institutions as well as on plots of land on lease from the Goa Industrial Development Corporation.

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