Summary
The Court declined to interfere with allocation of foreign exchange rate variation entirely to debt liability under the tariff orders in issue. No rule or authority supported Power Grid’s claimed 50:50 debt-equity allocation as a mandatory practice, and the cited calculation provision did not govern allocation. The appeals raised no substantial question of law. The direct-recovery mechanism and unfair burden of revisiting old tariffs on later consumers also supported non-interference.
Issues
- Whether the calculated foreign exchange rate variation had to be apportioned in a normative debt-equity ratio.
- Whether interference with the historic tariff allocation was warranted.
Provisions considered
- Regulations 1.3 and 1.7, Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (Terms and Conditions of Tariff) Regulations, 2001For capital-cost-based tariffs, utilities could recover FERV directly from beneficiaries without petitioning CERC; beneficiaries could bring objections before it. (¶ 7–9)
Held
- The calculation methodology was not challenged. Regulation 1.13(a) concerned calculation, not mandatory debt-equity apportionment, and no legal source was shown for the claimed 50:50 allocation. (¶¶ 3, 6, 8–9)
- The issue as presented raised no question of law, much less a substantial question of law, sufficient to sustain the appeals. (¶ 6)
- Revising the allocation for 2001–2004 after 15–18 years would pass the burden to consumers who were not consumers during that period; this further justified non-interference. (¶ 10)
- The connected 2015 appeal involved the same issue and was dismissed on the same reasoning. (¶ 12)
Result
Both appeals dismissed without costs. Tribunal/CERC directions allocating the FERV at issue only to debt liability left undisturbed; calculation methodology not reopened.