The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Punjab, throwing down the gauntlet challenging the Captain Amarinder Singh government for holding an open debate on high power tariff in the state, has said that if it were alive to the issue, the private power agreements inked by the erstwhile government could be scrapped in just five minutes. It has appealed to the ruling Congress and other political parties to support of the private member bill on the floor of the House in the coming Assembly session.Addressing media persons in Chandigarh, senior leader Aman Arora, Kultar Singh Sandhwan and Meet Hayer and Jai Krishan Singh Rouri (All MLAs) said that the agreements signed between the private players and the Badals involved a scam worth crores of rupees, saying that earlier Sukhbir Singh Badal and now Captain Amarinder Singh was pocketing huge ‘profits’, which was why the latter had neither nixed the anti-state PPOs nor reviewed the accounts, as he had promised to the people of the state before coming to power in 2017. He said that were Captain Amarinder Singh a tad serious over the issue touching all consumers alike, the scrapping of the PPOs would not take more than a flash of seconds.The AAP leader said that if the Captain government could scrap the water sharing agreements and the 2100 government-run service centres paying Rs 220 crore to BSL company, why couldn’t it scrap the PPOs in Punjab, Arora asked.Commenting on the one-sided PPOs, Arora further informed that SEPKO, a Chinese company installed thermal plants in Sasan in Gujarat and at Talwandi Sabo in Punjab with similar technology and budget, saying Sasan was paying 17 paise per unit while Talwandi Sabo was coughing up 8 times more, precisely Rs 1.42, forcing the common consumer to pay Rs 9 per unit, which, he said, was on the higher side compared to other states.
Similarly, citing the Thermal plant at Rajpura and Mudra Port power plant in Gujarat, saying that hefty kickback was being usurped from private players, saying that the agreement on the thermal power plant also involved a bigger scam, Arora said. The Sunam MLA said that the AAP would move Private Member Bill in the coming assembly session to scrap all power pacts, which, he said, would put across the perspective of all political parties including the government, indicating whether they were in favour of the common consumer or the power mafia ruing the roost in the state.Arora said that, after open admission by former power ministers, Rana Gurjit Singh and Gurpreet Singh Kangar, of paying worth several crores annually to the power plants under the agreement, the 7-page letter shot off by his cabinet colleague Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa to captain Amarinder Singh pointing out the flip side of the pacts was significant.Meet Hayer said that the Captain Amarinder Singh government was in no mood to scrap the PPOs, for simple reason that he was allegedly pocketing huge ‘amounts’ leaving the people to pay high tariff for electricity.Kultar Singh Sandhwan on the occasion said that that the meters installed in the state were not weather friendly and therefore there was loot upon loot over the power. Jai Krishan Singh Rouri said that the Arvind Kejriwal government had been providing cheapest electricity in Delhi by scrapping all deals with the private players there.