KATHMANDU: The Supreme Court has issued an interim order preventing the government-formed task force from proceeding with its review of electricity bills issued by the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) for dedicated feeder and trunk line users.
A joint bench of Justices Saranga Subedi and Tek Prasad Dhungana issued the order on Sunday in response to a writ petition filed by advocate Khadananda Kandel, who argued that the task force was formed illegally by Energy Minister Deepak Khadka.
The committee, led by former National Planning Commission member Prof. Dr. Arvind Kumar Mishra, was assigned to verify the bills issued by NEA.
With the Supreme Court’s ruling, the committee can no longer function.
Chartered accountant Sujan Kumar Kafle and Shriram Raj Pandey were also members of the committee, which was tasked with reviewing whether the NEA’s billing was calculated based on Time of Day (TOD) meters.
Despite being formed in early December, the committee had already requested NEA to provide billing details of industries that had used dedicated and trunk line services without paying dues.
However, NEA Managing Director Kulman Ghising had refused to recognize the committee and had not provided it with any documents.
He had maintained that industries disputing their bills could seek a review within NEA or appeal to the Electricity Regulatory Commission and the courts.
Earlier, the Council of Ministers had decided on November 10 to implement the Lal Commission report and collect outstanding electricity dues within 15 days based on TOD meters.
NEA’s board subsequently directed its management to enforce this decision, and notices had been sent to industries for payments.
However, industrialists had contested the billing, leading the energy minister to form the now-suspended committee.
The Lal Commission report had recommended different approaches for settling dues from various periods, including before and after the end of load-shedding in Nepal.
The disputed period, from January 2016 to April 2018, was identified for recalculating dues based on NEA’s own load-shedding records.
However, with the Supreme Court’s ruling, the government’s intervention through the task force has been legally blocked.
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