INLD leader decries 'bijlee rally' as a sham

Fatehabad, Oct 5 (UNI) Senior Indian National Lok Dal leader and former Haryana Minister Sampat Singh today strongly decried the proposed October 7 'Bijlee Rally' of the Congress describing it as ''rubbing salt on the wounds of people smarting under scarcity of power''.

''People of Haryana would rather like to observe 'black-out day' for government's failure to provide power,'' the INLD leader said while addressing mediapersons here.

Mr Singh stressed that there was no rationale in naming the October 7 rally as 'Bijlee Rally' as the government had so far aggravated the power problem rather than solving it.

He alleged that the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government had been misleading people on power front ever since it had come to power. It had claimed that availability of power in Haryana was 1587 megawatts, when the Congress took over the reins and had been further claiming that an additional 5000 megawatts would be added by the end of its present term.

The former minister claimed that both these figures were misleading as the availability of power was 4000 Megawatts when Hooda government came to power and not a single unit of power, generated from the projects launched by this government, would be added to this figure by the time the government completed its term.

He said that the only project likely to be completed by the end of Hooda government's term was the Yamunanagar plant, which was initiated by the erstwhile INLD government led by Mr Om Prakash Chautala.

Accusing the Hooda government of lacking vision, he cited the example of laying of foundation stone of gas-based power plants at Faridabad on August 25, 2005 without ensuring the availability of gas from the Gas Authority of India. As a result, the project had been abandoned by the government, he said.

He added that not a single long term power purchase agreement signed by the present government had matured so far because either they were against the National Power Tariff Policy or were lacking transparency.

Sampat Singh alleged that even in the proposed 1500 megawatt power plant of the NTPC, the foundation stone of which is being laid by Sonia Gandhi on October 7, Haryana would share 50 per cent power with Delhi, while the state's infrastructure was to be used.

He said that normally a state where a national project was installed got 10 per cent of the power without any share of it in the equity, but in the present case both Delhi and Haryana are having 25 per cent equity each besides 50 percent equity of the Centre, but Haryana was not getting any share in power in lieu of providing its land and other infrastructure.

UNI