Supreme Court agrees to hear IEX plea against power market coupling order

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to examine the Indian Energy Exchange's (IEX) appeal against the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission's order to implement market coupling for the day-ahead market and amend the regulations accordingly.

A bench of Justices P.S. Narasimha and Alok Aradhe refused to stay the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity's (APTEL) February 13 order that allowed the electricity regulator to proceed with the implementation of market coupling -a process designed to merge buy/sell orders from all power exchanges to improve price discovery.

However, the apex court sought response from the CERC on the IEX's appeal alleging that the Commission's July 2025 market coupling order would hurt its market share, and was "arbitrary" and "violated principles of natural justice." Senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Indian Energy, claimed that the CERC's coupling order would only lead to its loss of market share without any conceivable benefit.


"The company has a freedom of enterprise. Can you merge NSE and BSE together? If you pool all of them together, I will lose edge" Rohatgi contended, while claiming that IEX holds more than 95% market share.

CERC had in 2024 decided to implement a Shadow Pilot on Power System and Cost Optimization through Market Coupling, and had directed the Grid Controller of India to implement it where IEX, Power Exchange India and Hindustan Power Exchange would take turns acting as the market coupling operator. From January 2026, the Grid Controller of India was to aggregate energy prices across all power trading platforms and publish a single price.