Ajmer Vidyut Vitran Nigam Limited, the petitioner herein, was the opposite party before the District Forum. The respondent / complainant had obtained two electricity connections from the petitioner, one for domestic and another for commercial use. According to him, he has duly paid the bill for both the aforesaid connections according to rules. Petitioner Vidyut Nigam had issued a notice on 3.06.04 to the respondent on the basis of a Vigilance Committee Report and demanded Rs.15,000/- for misuse of domestic connection. It was alleged that respondent was using domestic connection for a commercial purpose, i.e., running a lathe machine. It was alleged that respondent was guilty of stealing electricity. Alleging that the petitioner was not stealing the electricity a complaint was filed before the District Forum. The District Forum allowed the complaint and quashed the demand. Aggrieved against this, the petitioner filed an appeal before the State Commission. The State Commission dismissed the appeal by observing :- “It may be stated here that the complainant / respondent has two connections, one of commercial and the other of domestic and since commercial connection was not working properly, therefore, he took the electricity from the domestic connection and for that a notice dated 03.06.04 was served upon him. The D.F. has observed that for functioning a machine the appellant should have supplied full electricity and since full electricity was not supplied by the appellant, therefore, from commercial connection the complainant was not in a position to run his machine. In such a case if he has taken electricity from domestic connection, he had committed no mistake.” State Commission has justified the use of domestic connection for running a lathe machine on the ground that the supply of electricity to the commercial connection was not working properly. We do not agree with the observations of the State Commission. A ‘consumer’ cannot use domestic connection for commercial purpose only because full Electricity was not being supplied to the commercial connection for the simple reason that the domestic and commercial connections are governed by different set of rules and conditions. Charges for domestic and commercial connection are different. For the reasons stated above, orders passed by District Forum and State Commission are set aside and the complaint is ordered to be dismissed.
......................JASHOK BHANPRESIDENT
......................B.K. TAIMNIMEMBER | | 
