Delhi Cong slams Goyal for power situation

Delhi Congress today attacked Union Power minister Piyush Goyal for misleading people on the power situation in the capital and accused him of preparing ground for a power tariff hike with his statement that people have to pay more to get quality power supply.
The party demanded that the BJP government at the Centre should immediately fulfill its election promise of reducing the power tariff by 30 per cent.
"The Power Minister (Goyal) said if people want to get quality power they have to pay more. This is strange as BJP had promised to give 30 per cent discount in power rates in its manifesto. So, I think it is the moral responsibility of the BJP to fulfill its promise now," Congress Legislative Party leader and former Delhi power minister Haroon Yusuf told reporters.

DPCC Chief Spokesperson Mukesh Sharma accused Goyal of trying to pressurise the DERC to hike power tariffs.
He claimed that there is an understanding between the power companies and the Union Power Minister "which needs to be exposed". He also said that the "silence" of Arvind Kejriwal on this issue was pointing a finger at his collusion too.
"Goyal's statement has come at a time when DERC is about to give its decision on whether to hike power tariffs in the city or not. This proves that he is trying to build pressure on the power regulator to hike the power rates. This is a conspiracy by the Central government," he said.

Coming down hard at Goyal's statement that it would take at least two years to fix Delhi's "poor" power infrastructure, Yusuf said that he (Goyal) will take time to understand the issue.

"We had supplied 5654 MW of peak power demand with the same infrastructure last year, so how can it be poor. This year the peak demand has not crossed it and it has been between 5400 and 5500. So there is no meaning in giving such statements," the former Delhi power minister said.
On the issue of the rising prices of sugar, Yusuf said that the BJP had failed to fulfill its promise of not raising prices of essential commodities.

"BJP made promises to cut down the prices of essential commodities. But the party recently hiked sugar prices. I want to request the BJP government to give respite to Delhiites from the power crisis as well as from the increasing prices of the essentials," he said.