Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi will lead a mashal juloos on May 28 to protest against power and water crises in the national Capital. “Rahulji will lead the mashal juloos (torch light procession) against power, water woes and the apathy of the Government in Delhi on May 28 from Rajghat at 6.30 pm!” Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken tweeted on Tuesday. Delhi has been reeling under a power crisis for the past few days. Maken also added that power and water woes are owing to the constant clashes between the AAP and the BJP, on each and every issue.
Taking a dig at the AAP Government, Maken alleged that of the 2,917 MW installed power generation capacity in Delhi, only 30.78 per cent of electricity was generated by all the six generation plants in the past one week when average power demand had peaked to 5,655 MW due to heatwave, which had gripped the entire national Capital.
Maken had earlier made this startling revelation claiming that no major effort have been put to improve the transmission capacity in the past two years in Delhi. The Congress leader alleged that the Centre and other agencies were not addressing the pressing issues of the Delhiites.
According to the Congress leader, four 400-KV sub-stations at Rajghat, Tuglakabad, Dwarka and Karampura could not be set up due to slackness of the Delhi Government and other land related unresolved issues with the Union Government-led Delhi Development Authority.
When the peak power demand of the city reached 5,258 MW on May 15, only 718 MW was generated against the installed capacity of 2,917 MW. The city was able to generate only 903 MW, when the power demand had touched its all-time high of 6,19 MW on May 29. The maximum that the city could generate was 1,010 MW on May 22 when the peak demand touched 5,583 MW.
Maken said that both Rajghat and Rithala plants, whose installed generation capacity was 135 and 95 MW respectively, were not able to generate even a single MW for the entire week. Even the NTPC-run Badarpur power plant was able to generate 165, 159, 179, 190, 174, 180, 319 and 324 MW from May 15 to May 22 respectively against its installed capacity of 705 MW.
The Congress leader said that he was surprised over the way the AAP Government had appointed the new DERC chief without taking prior approval of lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung. “The new DERC chief appointed by the Power Minister does not even find any mention on the DERC website.”
last week, Delhi saw the peak power demand at 6,188 MW, the highest since the privatisation of power distribution in 2002. The peak power demand had touched 5,846 MW in June last year.