Chandigarh, September 7
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Tuesday staged a protest across the state and burnt effigies of Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh over failure to scrap the faulty power purchase agreements (PPAs); causing loss to public exchequer. The party leaders and volunteers staged protests at all the district headquarters of the state including Patiala, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Mohali, Amritsar, Ropar and Gurdaspur. They demanded that Captain Amarinder Singh should resign from the post of Chief Minister for not living up to his promise.
In a statement issued from the party headquarters here on Tuesday, AAP senior leader and Leader of Opposition, Harpal Singh Cheema said the ruling Congress had run away from canceling the deadly power purchase agreements with the private power companies and had misled the public by pretending to get it revoked. “By taking oath of Sri Gutka Sahib before the elections, Captain Amarinder Singh had promised that with the formation of his government, the wrong power deals made by the Badals would be canceled and cheap power would be provided to the people of Punjab; but he has betrayed the people by reneging on his promises,” he added.
Taking a dig at Captain Amarinder Singh, Harpal Singh Cheema said that Captain, who formed the government by promising to issue white paper on power purchase agreements, was instead backing the power mafia started by the Badals. “Due to their collusion, Captain Amarinder Singh never took any action regarding wrong power agreements reached during the Badal government,” he said. Cheema further alleged that the Captain Amarinder Singh-led Congress government had sold the interests of Punjab to the private power companies in the same manner as the SAD-BJP government had sold and does not want to give up the commissions.
The AAP leader further questioned who would account for the thousands of crores of rupees looted from the state exchequer and the pockets of the people by the private power mafia from the Badal rule till the four-and-a-half-years of the Congress rule. Cheema said if the ruling party had been even more serious on this issue, they would have accepted the private member’s bill brought by the AAP. He assured that the power deals would be canceled within the first month of the formation of the AAP government and the private power mafia would be cracked down on in the same way as the Arvind Kejriwal government in Delhi.
