Executive not following court orders will lead to anarchy: SC

Allowing the Executive to act in violation of court orders will be “an invitation to anarchy”, the Supreme Court held in an order released on Tuesday, as it reproached the Centre for not being able to appoint a judicial member in the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) since the last four months.

A top court bench, headed by justice SK Kaul, also shot down a request by the government and the CERC to let the commission resume its work, saying the court cannot help consumers when the “government does not seem to be interested in coming to the aid of the consumers or making the commission functional”. The CERC – a regulatory body to determine power tariffs – has been non-functional since August after a restraining order by the court.

In 2018, the court had ordered the CERC and all state commissions to make certain they appoint a member-law, who must be either a sitting or a retired judge, or a person with substantial knowledge and practise of the law whenever the next vacancy arises.

Subsequently, a contempt plea was moved this year to point out that the government had appointed two members in the CERC without complying with the judgment to first appoint a member-law.

On Monday, the SC underlined that as many as 177 judgments and orders were pending disposal before the CERC. “The Executive cannot be expected to act nor permitted to act in breach of the judgment of this court. This would be an invitation to anarchy! The mutual respect of the three pillars of democracy requires each of them to respect the role and functioning of the other,” it said.