Cong lashes out at Punjab govt for power outages

Congress today lashed out at SAD-BJP government in Punjab for imposing load shedding on all categories of consumers, ridiculing the state government's claims of closing power units on account of low demand.
Deputy Leader of Congress in Lok Sabha Amarinder Singh in a statement issued here said villages across Punjab were still subjected to long duration power cuts.
"Same was the case with the industry," he said and questioned, "If there was really low demand for power why were the villages and industry subjected to regular long duration power cuts?"
The former chief minister said the matter of the fact was that the state was short of coal as it had failed to ensure and guarantee regular and adequate coal supply to power plants for "reasons best know to it".

The senior Congress leader said he had been continuously maintaining that there was no point in setting up power plants as long as there was no guaranteed and uninterrupted coal supply.
And this, he noted, was proving to be right.
Having a dig at the state government claims over low demand as the reason for the closure of power plants, Amarinder said, "If it is really so, then the Akalis should better continue to generate power to the full capacity and export it to other countries as often claimed by them."
Punjab has been reeling under heavy load shedding ranging between 7-8 hours a day even as power utility PSPCL maintained that some of thermal units were shut down due to low demand.