EVERGREEN ENGINEERING WORKS Vs. MAHARASHTRA STATE ELECTRICITY BOARD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) HEARD. Rule. By consent, the rule is made returnable forthwith and taken upon for hearing. The respondent No. 6 is a proforma party as no relief is sought against the said respondent.

(2.) THE petitioners challenge the order comprised in the communication dated 31-10-2003 passed by the Appellate Authority of the respondents rejecting the appeal filed by the petitioners against the order dated 31-3-2003 of the Superintending Engineer. The challenge to the impugned order is on various grounds. However, it is not necessary to address to all those grounds and suffice to consider the matter only on one ground, namely, that the order dated 31-3-2003 was passed without hearing the petitioners and the lower Appellate Authority has confirmed the same without affording an opportunity to the petitioners of letting them know the materials based on which the respondents had arrived at the alleged assessment of sum of Rs. 45,43,894/- as being the amount due and payable by the petitioners on account of the alleged pilferage of the electricity.

(3.) THE records apparently disclose that pursuant to the order dated 27-9-2002, the Chief Engineer in exercise of the powers bestowed upon him under the statute applicable to the parties had finally assessed the amount at Rs. 21,46,730/- to be due and payable on account of the alleged pilferage of the electricity. It is also a matter of record that pursuant to the receipt of the original notice in relation to the alleged pilferage of electricity, the petitioners had already deposited a sum of Rs. 23,00,000/- with the respondents. It is not in dispute that prior to 31-3-2003 and after 27-9-2002, there had been neither any hearing given to the petitioners by any of the authorities on behalf of the respondents nor any document or material was supplied to the petitioners by the respondents in relation to the proceedings in the matter. The communication dated 31-3-2003 nowhere discloses any final assessment of the Chief Engineer other than the one referred to in the communication dated 27-9-2002 and yet the communication dated 31-3-2003 refers to the final bill being prepared at Rs. 45,43,894/- while the final assessment under the letter dated 27-9-2002 discloses the liability of the petitioners to the tune of Rs. 21,46,730/- The communication dated 31-3-2003, on the face of it, nowhere discloses any ground for arriving at the figure of Rs. 45,43,894/- apart from stating "as per decision of the Chief Engineer". It was sought to be brought to the notice of the Court on behalf of the respondents that it does refer to another order of the Chief Engineer. Indeed, the reference clause in the communication reads thus :-"ce/kalyan Zone's Order No. CE/klnz/tech/conf/164 dated 5-3-2003. " undoubtedly, the reference clause refers to the order dated 5-3-2003 placed on record. However, there is no copy of any such order dated 5-3-2003. The contents of the communication dated 31-3-2003, however, refers to this order as "vide letter under reference". In other words, on the face of it, the communication nowhere discloses any order having been passed by the Chief engineer subsequent to 27-9-2002 assessing the amount due and payable by the petitioners to be Rs. 45,43,894/ -. Added to this, as already observed above, admittedly, no materials to justify any such sought to be in accounts by the petitioners to the respondents were disclosed to the petitioners at any point of time. Apparently, the entire exercise has been done without following the basic principles of natural justice.