Delhi Congress president Sheila Dikshit called on Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday and demanded six-month waiver to power consumers in the city, saying that the customers have already been paid over Rs 7,401 crore as increased fixed charges and surcharge for pension fund.

Delhi Chief Minister agreed to order a probe into how the discoms were allowed to collect Rs 7401 crores on fixed charges and pension accounts, the party said in a statement.

A party delegation led by Dikshit asked Kejriwal to immediately roll back the fixed charges and pension funds, being illegally collected from the power consumers. A memorandum signed by Dikshit was submitted to Kejriwal. “The Delhi Congress demands that the AAP government should not  bill the power consumers in Delhi for next six months as the state  government has illegally collected Rs 7,401 crore from them in the  name of fixed charges and pensions funds to favour (power) discoms,” it said. The Delhi Congress has stepped up attack on the ruling AAP over issues related to power and water supply, which the ruling dispensation claims were its biggest achievements, with the Delhi assembly polls due in early 2020.

After meeting with Kejriwal, Dikshit said that the Congress delegation met the Chief Minister to tell him about the problems being faced by the people of Delhi, particularly the power outage and the severe water shortage, and because of that, people are being put to endless woes in these severe summer days.

Besides Dikshit, working presidents Haroon Yusuf, Rajesh Lilothia and Devender Yadav, former Delhi Ministers Ramakant Goswami, Dr Kiran Walia, spokespersons Jitender Kumar Kochar (Jitu) and Harnam Singh were members of the delegation who attended the meeting.

Haroon Yusuf said that this was a blatant lie as the Election Code of Conduct had come into force only from March, 2019 whereas the fixed charges issue, which the Delhi Congress has been raising time and again, had been hanging fire for the past one year.

Yusuf said that the AAP Government’s promise of providing 24-hour uninterrupted power supply has proved to be a hollow promise, as the people of Delhi have been going through a harrowing time due to the frequent power cuts in the national Capital. “The Congress privatised the power distribution in Delhi to ensure uninterrupted power supply even at the peak of summer. Before privatizations, the city used to experience power cuts ranging from 12 to 18 hours.

He said that the delegation also demanded that the AAP Government should immediately stop charging 3.8 per cent pension fund in the power bills as when the tripartite agreement with the discoms was signed, it was agreed upon that whatever gap there is in the pension funds would be filled by the discoms.