Chandigarh, February 21: Leader of Opposition (LoP) in Punjab Vidhan Sabha, Harpal Singh Cheema said on the floor of the House on the pacts on power signed between the erstwhile SAD-BJP government and private companies.
Demanding the scrap of the agreements eating out the vitals of the cash-strapped Punjab, Cheema said that if the then Captain Government (in 2004) can scrap the agreements on water-share with other state stakeholders, why can’t it scrap pacts with three private power companies usurping crores annually, Cheema said.
Addressing media in the Press Gallery here along with Aman Arora and other MLAs, Cheema reiterated that the Captain Amarinder Singh had given a word to the people to scrap the anti-state and anti-people pacts with these companies once his party was voted to power. However, instead of nailing the Badals for the long-term agreements, he started following into their footsteps.
On the occasion, Aman Arora said on the basis of documentary evidence that the agreement were anti-people and anti-Punjab as the state had to pay them a whopping sum of rupees 2800 crore even if they did not produce a single unit of power under the said agreement. He added that if the agreements were not scrapped, the state will have to shell out 70,000 crore in the next 25 years.
Arora further informed that House that replying to the expose by AAP, power minister Gurpreet Singh Kangar dubbed these three private thermal plants as white elephants reared by the Badals. On the occasion former power minister and Congress MLA Rana Gurjit Singh corroborating the allegations leveled by AAP, said that a random estimate that had been prepared by an expert committee, had said the state had to Rs 62,500 more in the next 25 years.
Kangar further admitted to have paid Rs 446 crore in the last 10 years without any power been produced by these companies under scanner. Arora said that on the one hand, the government was not ready to pay salaries to the striking teachers amounting to Rs 300 crore, on the other 400 crore were being splurged on these companies.
Demanding a white paper on the power status, Cheema and Arora, in a joint statement, accused the SAD-BJP of signing these agreements to bring in the private players into the fold and indulging in the open loot of worth crores. Dubbing the act of wearing black dresses by SAD MLAs during the session as preposterous, they said it was a ploy to grab eyeballs, stating that those who were responsible for aggravating the problem, were now shedding crocodile tears. They said that AAP spearheaded ‘Bijli Andolan’, which kick started on February 8, had so far reached out to affected people of as many as 4000 villages and resolved their hefty bills issues and resolved them.
Others who were present on the occasion included Kutar Singh Sandhwan, Meet Hayer, Principal Budh Ram, Jai Kishan Rori, Kulwant Singh Pandori (All MLAs), party spokeman Neel Garg and state Media in charge Manjit Singh Sidhu.
