The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday said the corrupt nexus between the power companies and the political parties is the main reason behind the poor power infrastructure and regular power cuts in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress-ruled States.
The party also pointed out that the 24x7 hard work of the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has made Delhi a city which gets uninterrupted power supply. Senior AAP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh said that before Kejriwal took over as the CM of Delhi, there used to be a corrupt nexus between the political leadership of Delhi and the power discoms. "Intentionally, a heavy loss in the transmission and distribution of electricity was shown in the documents to push for an increase in the rates power tariffs," he said.
Singh also said that during Congress and BJP regime, Delhi used to witness 6 to 8 hour of regular power cuts and also regular increase in the price of power tariffs. "This scenario has been replaced with 24 hours regular supply of electricity only because of the strong will and determination of Chief Minister and power minister Satyender Jain," Singh said.
Citing the data published on the UDAY scheme website of Central government, Singh attacked the BJP and Congress governments of Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh by pointing to the AT&C (Aggregate Technical and Commercial) losses in the states accounting to 23, 34 and 31 per cent respectively. "The financial burdens of such losses are imposed on consumers by increasing the tariff rates. But in Delhi now people get 24x7 electricity in the cheapest rate," he said.
He also questioned the BJP and Congress governments on when will they fulfill the promise to provide 24-hours electricity to the respective states? "Due to corrupt nexus between the industries and the politicians have led to the poor power infrastructure," he said, adding that industries are shutting down, farmers are unable to irrigate their lands in these states due to power cuts are impacting the traders of the states. When the AAP government could do it in a small state such as Delhi, why can't these states do the same" he asked?
AAP National Spokesperson Raghav Chadha said that after coming to power, the Kejriwal government has drastically brought down that AT&C (Aggregate Technical and commercial) losses to just 8 per cent while in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh this loss is 31 per cent in Congress-ruled Punjab it is 34 per cent and in BJP-ruled Haryana, it is 23 per cent.
"The satellite cities like Noida, Gurugram, Faridabad and Ghaziabad get 6-8 hours of power cut every day. Most surprisingly 52 sectors of Gurugram are yet to get any electricity connection; therefore, for the residents of these areas, the diesel-run highly polluting DG sets are the only source of electricity. On the other hand, in Delhi due to the 24x7 electricity, there is a complete shutdown in the use of DG sets and inverters," he added.