The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed the appeal by the Indian Energy Exchange (IEX) challenging the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission’s (CERC) order to implement market coupling for the day-ahead market and amend the regulations accordingly.
A bench of justices PS Narasimha and Alok Aradhe refused to interfere with the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity’s February 13 order that allowed CERC to proceed with the implementation of market coupling, a process designed to merge buy/sell orders from all power exchanges to improve price discovery. The court refrained from expressing any opinion at this stage as the regulator’s norms were at the draft stage. It also kept questions of law open to be considered at an appropriate stage.
Asking IEX how its right to do business would be hampered and what the issue was with the current regulatory regime, Justice Narasimha observed that its “monopoly will be sealed”.
However, CERC told the SC that the power market norms, including a framework for market coupling, would be brought in the next four-six weeks. IEX had said that CERC’s July 2025 market coupling order would hurt its market share. The order was “arbitrary”, “violated principles of natural justice” and would only lead to loss of its market share without any conceivable benefit, it added.
In 2024, the CERC decided to carry out a ‘Shadow Pilot on Power System and Cost Optimization through Market Coupling’, directing the Grid Controller of India to implement it, where the IEX, Power Exchange India and Hindustan Power Exchange would take turns acting as the market coupling operator.
