Congress activists led by former state chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi staged a demonstration and burnt the effigy of the state government to protest the hike in power tariff effective from Monday.
Party leaders later handed over a memorandum in this connection to Governor Bl Joshi seeking his immediate intervention in the matter pointing out that the hike would
hit the common man hard.
Interestingly, state Congress chief Nirmal Khatri, who preferred to kick-start the four-day protest from Etah last Saturday, did not take part in the demonstration in lucknow on Monday.
Even Union Minister of Steel, Beni Prasad Verma did not join the stir despite being in the state capital leaving Joshi and and other local leaders to conduct the show.
Threatening that activists would fight both on the streets and on the floor of the House against the anti-public stand of the SP government of taxing the common man, Rita Bahuguna Joshi alleged that the hope of the people from the ruling regime has been dashed just a year.
"Akhilesh Yadav’s government has failed on all fronts esepcially law and order and has now burdened the common man which we will not be tolerated at any cost," said Joshi addressing demonstrators at the Hazratganj crossing..
She threatened that her party would intesnify the stir if the government did not mend its thought process and rolled back the hike in tariff.
The Congress MlA from lucknow said that despite the large gap between demand and supply of power, the SP had done nothing to set up new power plants or arrange for stand by supply.
"On one hand, they failed to add any unit for hiking power generation and on the other hand, rampant corruption in the department, power theft, power losses etc have contributed to the worsening situation in UP," alleged Joshi. She claimed that even in the rural areas, the farmers were not
getting water for their crops.