Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
Chandigarh, State Congress president and Gurdaspur MP Sunil Jakhar said today that the state government was reviewing all power purchase agreements (PPAs) made during the Akali-BJP rule.
Addressing a press conference, Jakhar said efforts would be made to rationalise the power tariff. He said the current hike had been forced upon the people by the Badals, who had signed a tripartite MoU with the BJP-led Central Government and the PSPCL.
Jakhar said, “The real culprit is Sukhbir Badal, who signed the MoU on March 4, 2016, in the presence of then Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal and agreed to hike the tariff on a yearly basis in order to implement the Centre’s UDAY (Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana) scheme.”
As per the MoU, the PPCC chief said, the Badals had agreed to a 5 per cent hike for 2016-17 and 9 per cent for 2017-18. He said the recent hike was in line with this pact.
Jakhar said the senior Badal was “trying to fool the people or again exhibiting selective amnesia” by blaming the Congress and Capt Amarinder for the hike.
The Congress MP said political compulsions in view of the Assembly elections had forced the Badals, who had raised power tariff by 77 per cent during their 10-year rule, not to effect a hike in 2016-17, even as they resorted to gimmickry by reducing it by 0.65 per cent during that fiscal.
The PPCC president claimed that another reason for the high power tariff in the state was the “illogical” decision of the Badal government to sign PPAs with private thermal plants at unreasonably high rates. He said the Akali-BJP government had agreed to fixed charges to be paid to these plants at much higher rates in comparison to other thermal plants in India of same/similar capacity and technology.
He said the Akali-BJP government, which had Bikram Singh Majithia as the Renewable Energy Minister and and Sukhbir as the Power Minister, signed PPAs at exorbitant costs for solar and biomass power plants also.
Jakhar said had then Akali-BJP government started mining from the Pachhwara captive coal mine, which was allotted to Punjab, coal to the state would have been much cheaper as the rates would have been far lower than that of coal supplied by Coal India and would have resulted in cheaper power generation. He stated that the state lost Rs 400-500 crore per year due to this inaction.
