Flip-flop by Delhi power regulator

The good people of Delhi must pay a wee bit more for the power they consume, decided the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC). It issued an order, in its usual lucid, transparent fashion, that the Power Purchase Adjustment Charge (PPAC) is being revised up. Most good people of Delhi, being residents of the Capital and invariably endowed with what the city calls 'connections' to those in power, know everything and so cannot really be so brazenly impolite as to ask what the heck this charge is. Depending on whether they earn a fixed or a variable income or just an informal rent on Delhi's some very variable incomes, Delhiites braced themselves to rise in protest or just grin and bear it. But in vain. For, the very next day, the DERC withdrew its order. It rolled it back, dipped it in the hottest sauce, bit off more than it could chew and choked on an explanation that called into question the integrity of its own functioning.

We had not received cost information from the suppliers, explained DERC, while dismissing the charge that the rollback was the result of a rap on the knuckles from the powers that be, given that Delhi is headed for polls. How did DERC estimate that a PPAC adjustment was needed, if it did not have the relevant cost information? And why did the DERC spokesman sport double rows of Band-Aid on his knuckles?