BJP govt in Delhi lacks action plan to meet summer power demand: Congress

New Delhi, April 3 (IANS) Expressing concern over frequent power cuts in the national capital, Delhi unit Congress president Devender Yadav on Thursday said that the BJP-led government does not seem to have any concrete action plan to meet the high power demand during summer.

He said that the Delhi government has failed to rein in the power distribution companies discoms, who are seeking a tariff hike by creating pressure on the Government through power outages for hours at a stretch.

Yadav said that under pressure from the discoms, Power Minister Ashish Sood has already announced that power tariffs may be hiked to put additional burden on the people, like the AAP government had done by imposing various surcharges.

The Congress chief said that like the previous Arvind Kejriwal Government, the Rekha Gupta administration is also trying to help the discoms by "looting "the power consumers.

Yadav said that according to an estimate, the demand for electricity during peak summer is likely to reach 9,000 MW, and if the discoms could not meet the power demand of 4,070-4,360 MW on March 25 – the day that witnessed large-scale power cuts across the city -- how would the power companies meet the huge demand as the temperature will soar further in summer.

The Congress leader also raised the fear of consumers getting inflated power bills, as was the case under the Kejriwal government.

He said that during the Congress regime in Delhi, power distribution was streamlined so effectively that power cuts became a thing of the past, and people were not burdened with inflated power bills.

--IANS

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