The Supreme Court on Friday asked a selection panel appointed by the Delhi Government to ensure the appointments of chairperson and two members to Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) within two months.
A bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant passed the order after the Rekha Gupta-led Delhi Government said that it constituted a search and selection committee on May 27 to fill up three vacant posts in DERC in terms of an earlier direction.
The bench — which also included Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice Vipul M Pancholi — asked the search panel to ensure that the appointments of the DERC chairperson and two members were completed in two months and sought a compliance affidavit.
DERC is a statutory body regulating the power sector in the national capital. It determines the tariff payable for the use of the transmission facilities in the manner provided in Section 29 of the Electricity Regulatory Commission Act, 1998.
It also regulates power purchase and procurement process of the transmission utilities and distribution utilities including the price at which the power shall be procured from the generating companies, generating stations or from other sources for transmission, sale, distribution and supply in the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi.
On behalf of petitioner ‘Energy Watchdog’, an NGO, advocate Pranav Sachdeva urged the bench to direct the panel to ensure the appointments within one month. DERC was not taking up adjudicatory functions for the last one year, Sachdeva had alleged.
The petitioner had sought a direction to the Delhi Government to make regular appointments of the DECR chairperson and members.
The NGO had referred to an August 2025 order of the top court, in which it was recorded that the counsel appearing for the Delhi Government had assured that the process of regular appointments in DERC would be completed expeditiously.
Despite the assurance given before the apex court, the explicit statutory provisions of the Electricity Act, 2003, and an April 2018 verdict mandating the inclusion of a judicial member/person of law as a member of the commission, the Delhi Government failed to take any steps to make regular appointments in DERC, it alleged.
It contended that the lack of a judicial member/person of law completely disabled DERC from fulfilling its adjudicatory functions. “This violates the consumers’ right under Articles 14 and 21, inasmuch as petitions/applications under Section 142 of the Electricity Act are no longer being heard or listed as per administrative notice/noting on the cause list dated July 15, 2025, of DERC’s website… which came to be issued after the chairperson, Justice (retd) Umesh Kumar, superannuated in July 2025,” the plea said.
The status quo also violated the core premise of the Electricity Act, which requires the state electricity regulatory commissions to be autonomous and independent from governmental interference, the NGO contended.
