NEW DELHI: The backlog of cases before the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (
APTEL
) has shot up by 70% in the last one year to 1,516 as the body managed to dispose only 49 cases in the last two years, leaving claims running into
lakhs of cores of rupees
in limbo and shaking
investor confidence
in
power sector
reforms.
APTEL insiders said some of these cases are pending since 2013, while many others are in limbo for more than 180 days mandated by the Electricity Act for disposing appeals.
The disputes are related to a diverse range of issues and the delayed judicial process, thus, affects stakeholders across the electricity supply chain.
This goes against the grain of reforms where speedy settlement of commercial disputes, which was one of the main objectives for setting up the body, is necessary to instils investor confidence.
There are two courts under the APTEL. As of January 30, some 930 ‘long matters’ and 161 ‘short matters’ are pending in Court-1 and 586 long matters and 57 short matters in Court-2. The total number of pending cases stood at 888 as of November 2022.
Each court is required to have at least two members, one from a legal and the other from technical background. Court-1 consists of APTEL chairperson, Justice Ramesh Ranganathan, and member (technical) Seema Gupta. Court-2 is made up of APTEL member technical Sandesh Kumar Sharma and member (jurdical) Virender Bhat.
While insiders blamed fault lines within the body and skewed work allocation for the slow pace of adjudication. But it is also partly because APTEL has not functioned with its full sanctioned strength, which lead to the backlog. It was only in September 2023 that the four-member body got its full sanctioned strength.
English (US) ·