Chandigarh, January 21
Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Punjab President and chief ministerial candidate Bhagwant Mann has accused Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi of misleading people on the issue of Power Purchase Agreement (PPA). Mann said that the announcement of cancelling the power purchase agreement has not been implemented even today, but the Channi government has spent crores of rupees from the exchequer to advertise the cancellation of PPAs. He said that all they will all be held accountable for their actions in the court of the people.
In a statement issued on Friday, Mann alleged that like Badals and Captain, Channi government also fixed its commission (brokerage) in power purchase and colluded with private power companies. He said Punjab Congress President Navjot Singh Sidhu and Chief Minister Channi used to claim that if they came to power, they would immediately cancel the power agreements, but that did not happen. They will have to answer to the people about it now.
Mann said that the Punjab Government is still buying about 7000 MW of power from the three private thermal plants at Rajpura, Talwandi Sabo and Goindwal Sahib at the same old over prices. The previous Akali-BJP and Congress governments did not create their own sources for power generation. And by using government resources, private companies are selling electricity to the government at expensive prices. To hide the failure of his government, Chief Minister Channi pulled drama to cancel the expensive power purchase agreements.
Mann said that Chief Minister Channi, while announcing to decrease electricity rates, said that the agreement of Goindwal Thermal Power Plant has been cancelled. Now the Punjab government will buy electricity at Rs. 2.38 and sell it at Rs. 2.65 per unit. But this announcement turned out to be a complete lie. The reality is that even today electricity is being purchased from that thermal plant at the rate of Rs. 6 to 7 per unit. The purpose of this announcement was to mislead the people of Punjab.
On the announcement of Chief Minister Channi to waive the pending electricity bills, Mann said that on September 29, 2021, the Channi government had announced to waive off the domestic electricity arrears of up to 2 kW, but in the name of waiving the outstanding bills, the Congress government only waived off the electricity bills of its MLAs and ministers. Mann said that the Aam Aadmi Party government would waive off outstanding electricity bills as well as provide 300 units of free electricity per month to domestic consumers. Mann claimed that our government will not reduce the electricity bill, but will make it zero. Just as today the electricity bills of more than 70% of the households in Delhi are zero; in the same way we will make the electricity bills of the people of Punjab nil too.
