Unscheduled power cuts in extremely hot weather conditions continue to generate political heat in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh—both power surplus states.
Disruption of power supply has become a major issue and both the ruling Congress and the opposition BJP are constantly blaming each other for the situation. Congress governments in both the states have blamed the power crisis as deliberate and BJP-instigated action by a section of power sector employees. This has caused political temperatures to rise in both states.
The installed power generation capacity in MP is over 23,000 MW, while the average demand is around 9,500 MW. In Chhattisgarh, the installed capacity is around 14,000 MW and the demand just at around 4,500 MW.
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In Madhya Pradesh, public relations minister P.C. Sharma added to the issue on Thursday, saying that the state government would conduct a probe in the purchase of power equipments, including transformers during the tenure of Shivraj Singh Chouhan government, as there are serious doubts on the quality of these equipments.
“The BJP government seems to have purchased equipments of very poor quality and that is resulting in the power supply issues now, like constant tripping of supply. There seems to be a big scam in the purchase. We will conduct probe in this matter,” Sharma said.
Former minister and BJP MLA Narottam Mishra, however, retaliated saying that the Congress government should stop making excuses such as poor quality of transformers, and should, instead, find out whether the problem was due to focus on transfers instead of basic issues. “If the equipments were of poor quality, why was there no problem during our tenure,” the ex-minister asked.
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Earlier on Wednesday, chief minister Kamal Nath came out with a public message, talking of the power crisis situation and the efforts to improve it. Even in this message, the CM said the power cuts were not due to shortage of power, but due to “man-made impediments in power supply and failure (of the previous government) to make necessary long-term changes in the system for years”.
Meanwhile, Bhopal MP Pragya Singh Thakur said there would soon be an agitation against the state government on issues of water and power supply. “The BJP is planning an agitation soon,” Thakur said while talking to media persons.
In Chhattisgarh, too, the issue has taken a deep political turn with Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel directly blaming the BJP for the power cut situation. He said the power generation in the state was more than enough, but the supply was not reaching the consumers. “This is because BJP people are sitting inside the system and causing problems deliberately. And when we take action, the BJP itself raises hue and cry,” the CM said.
The decision of the Chhattisgarh government to suspend nine power company engineers in Sarguja has led to an unrest. The Power Engineers' Association has warned of agitation if suspension of their colleagues is not revoked.
