Chiding the Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar for talking out of his hat to cover up the Punjab Government’s failure to keep power tariff under control, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Badal on Monday said he should know that all power purchase agreements (PPAs) were signed as per the guidelines issued by the then Congress-led UPA Government.

“It seemed as if Jakhar is deliberately misleading the people by not telling them that the PPAs were signed with private parties based on a competitive bidding process as per bidding guidelines issued by the Union Ministry of Power,” said Sukhbir.

He said the draft guidelines, which were circulated by the Union Power Ministry to States, were adopted as such by the SAD-BJP Government. “PPA was signed after an international bid which led to top companies like larsen and Toubro and Vedanta bagging the prestigious projects. PPAs of both these companies were the lowest in the country as of then,” he said.

On tripartite MoU between the BJP-led Union Ministry and the PSPCl, Sukhbir said even on this issue, Jakhar had concealed the truth from the people. “The fact of the matter is that PSPCl was saddled with loans with high rate of interest as per the prevailing rates. The Centre proposed swapping these loans with loans at substantially low rate of interest under UDAY (Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana) which involved implementing some reforms which were also successfully implemented by PSPCl. All this has resulted in savings of hundreds of crores for PSPCl,” added Sukhbir.

Asking the Congress Government why it had failed to control the price of power as had been successfully done by the SAD-BJP Government, he said: “Today, the Government is taking advantage of surplus power by offering the same to the industrial sector at the rate of Rs 5 per unit.”

Stating that Jakhar should have also listed the achievements of the previous Congress government on the power front, he said that during 2002-07 not a single unit of power was added in Punjab.

“Before the SAD-BJP Government took up the reins of the State, Punjab was a power deficit State with a production of 6,200 MW. We added an additional 5,600 MW at a capital investment of `30,000 crore. All this was possible due to the special focus on making Punjab power surplus. Simultaneously, during this period, PSPCl was awarded the distinction of being the best distribution utility in the country,” pointed Sukhbir.

Telling the PPCC chief that it was he who was suffering from selective amnesia, Sukhbir said that Jakhar also forgot to mention that PEDA had been declared one of the best performing state nodal agencies under the energy conservation programme during 2012 and 2013 by the Union Ministry of Power.

“Competitive and transparent bidding had resulted in huge interest in solar power projects in Punjab and that the State had achieved unique distinction of reducing its power buy back rates in successive PPAs which was on record,” he added.