'Jakhar covering up govt's failure in checking power tariff'

SAD president Sukhbir Badal has accused Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar of covering up his government's failure to keep power tariff under check and said all power purchase agreements were signed as per guidelines issued by the then Congress-led UPA government.
Jakhar had recently blamed the Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP government for the power hike in the state.
In a statement here, the former deputy chief minister accused Jakhar of deliberately misleading the people by not telling them that the PPA's were signed with private parties based on competitive bidding process as per bidding guidelines issued by the then Union Ministry of Power.

"The draft guidelines which were circulated by the Union Power Ministry to states were adopted as such by the SAD-BJP government. The PPA was signed after an international bid which led to top companies like Larsen & Toubro and Vedanta bagging prestigious projects. The PPAs of both these companies were the lowest in the country as of then", he said.
On tripartite MoU between the Union Power Ministry and power utility PSPCL, he said even on this issue Jakhar had "hidden" the truth from people.
"The fact of the matter is that PSPCL was saddled with loans with high rate of interest as per prevailing rates. The Union government proposed swapping these loans with loans at substantially low rate of interest under the UDAY (Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana).

"This scheme involved implementing some reforms which were also successfully implemented by PSPCL. All this has resulted in savings of hundreds of crores for PSPCL", he claimed.

Asking the Congress government why it had failed to control the price of power as had been successfully done by the SAD-BJP government, he said, "Today the government is taking advantage of surplus power by offering the same to the industrial sector at the rate of Rs five per unit. Who is misleading the people, me or Sunil Jakhar?
"Why doesn't the Congress government reduce the draconian power tariff increase imposed on urbanites through similar means", he asked.

On October 28, the ruling Congress had blamed the previous 10-year old SAD-BJP regime for putting the power sector into "mess" and said the state government has ordered third party audit into the power purchase agreements (PPAs) signed during previous regime to "unmask" the "scam" in it.
It had claimed that PPAs signed by the power utility PSPCL with private companies during SAD-BJP regime for the purchase of energy at a "higher" rate was one of the prime reasons for the current power tariff hike.