Yogi's power sector privatisation plan facing opposition in own backyard

Ruling BJP leaders urge Yogi to scarp plan to privatise power distribution

After facing stiff resistance of the opposition parties and power employees over the proposed privatisation of power distribution in the urban areas of Uttar Pradesh, chief minister Yogi Adityanath is now facing the disapproval in his own backyard with ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders also joining the chorus.

Several BJP policymakers have written to Adityanath seeking scrapping of the privatisation plan. Lucknow Member of Parliament (MP) Kaushal Kishore has written to Adityanath saying the sole motive of the private companies was to earn profit and they could never replace public sector undertakings. Therefore, the government should reconsider its decision on privatisation.

The proposal to privatise power distribution franchisee in Lucknow, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Meerut and Moradabad has so far met with stiff opposition of the powermen, who had recently boycotted work and also announced to proceed on a 72 hour work boycott on April 9 if the government failed to roll back its decision.

Similarly, Varanasi member of legislative assembly (MLA) Ravindra Jaiswal, Malihabad MLA Jai Devi and several other legislators including Neel Ratan Singh Patel, Surendra Narayan Singh, Rafiq Ansari, Kedar Nath Singh etc have written letters to the CM requesting reversal of the cabinet decision.

UP Vidyut Karamchari Sangharsh Samiti has started a campaign to hand over memorandum to all the people’s representatives in the state seeking their intervention. Samiti convenor Shailendra Dubey said the campaign had started to bear fruits and even the ruling BJP leaders were supporting their cause against privatisation.

On March 27, an estimated 100,000 powermen including both regular and contractual engineers and employees had observed day-long work boycott against the proposal to hand over power distribution to private companies in the five cities. They alleged the privatisation would only benefit a clutch of business houses and industrialists. During work boycott, the employees of UPPCL and its affiliated distribution companies do not attend to any maintenance work except for emergency services at hospitals and water supply.

During the previous Mayawati regime (2007-12), power distribution franchisee in Agra was handed over to Torrent in 2010. Recently, the Adityanath cabinet had okayed the proposal to introduce private franchisee model for power distribution in these towns. Similar proposal was also mooted during the previous Akhilesh Yadav regime, however, it was put off after stiff opposition by employees, who feared losing government jobs, although the government has sought to allay such apprehensions.

The state has claimed Torrent had invested Rs 8 billion in ramping up power distribution infrastructure in Agra and that line losses had also come down significantly. Now, the state wants to focus on rural electrification rather than concentrating on the urban areas, especially after the Adityanath government signing the 24x7 ‘Power for All’ document with the Centre, which mandates providing power connection to every household.