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29. However, the petitioner had raised upon the respondent a demand towards unauthorised use of electricity, including misuse charges and late payment surcharge, in the sum of about Rs. 30 lacs. In view of this, the statutory bar contained in the second proviso to section 22C(1) does apply ; and therefore the forum did not have jurisdiction to entertain the dispute between the petitioner and the respondent.

30. Besides, the provisions of section 145 of the Electricity Act also stand in the way of the forum having entertained the dispute. Since the case at hand relates to misuse of electricity, it is covered under section 126 of the Electricity Act. The dispute is therefore amenable to determination by the assessing officer under section 126, by the appellate authority under section 127 and by the adjudicating officer under section 143 of the Electricity Act, by reason of which even the jurisdiction of the Civil Court was barred under section 145. So the Presiding Officer could not have entertained the dispute and no injunction could have been granted.

32. Furthermore, in Sri Seetaram Rice Mill (supra), while dealing with the scheme for redressal of grievances against an electricity utility company under sections 126 and 127 of the Electricity Act, the Supreme Court has said :

"87. Having dealt with and answered determinatively the questions framed in the judgment, we consider it necessary to precisely record the conclusions of our judgment which are as follows:

(Emphasis supplied) the purport of which observations is that if a dispute falls within section 126, even the High Court should ordinarily not interfere in exercise of its jurisdiction under Article 226 ; and if it decides to do so, it must not transgress the limits of its jurisdiction and should remand the matter to the assessing authority by directing the consumer to file objections before the assessing authority, after dealing with any jurisdictional issues. Clearly, once it is the mandate of the Supreme Court that even the High Court should forbear from exercising its extraordinary jurisdiction under Article 226 since there is a specific mechanism provided under sections 126 and 127 of the Electricity Act, there is no question that the Presiding Officer ought not to have entered upon the merits of the case, even prima-facie at initial stage, and ought not to have granted any interim relief to the respondent.

d. Fourthly, since the statute provides the mechanism to address the dispute at hand under the scheme of sections 126 and 127 of the Electricity Act, a Lok Adalat could not have entered upon any form of adjudication of the dispute and could not have granted any interim relief;

e. Lastly, even if the forum was intended to be a Permanent Lok Adalat set-up under section 22B with the power to adjudicate, it could not have decided the dispute at hand since the quantum of the dispute was in excess of Rs. 10 lacs, which is the pecuniary threshold of the jurisdiction of a Permanent Lok Adalat as per section 22C of the LSA Act.