PPP chief hits out at Pb Dy CM for power sector losses

People's Party of Punjab (PPP) chief Manpreet Singh Badal today hit out at Deputy Chief Minister of playing havoc with the power sector, by allegedly making the state Powercom pay Rs 2,700 crore every year to private thermal plants, even without purchasing a single unit.
"This is just shocking that the state government is paying a huge cost to fulfil the 'dream' of Sukhbir Singh Badal to make Punjab power surplus.
"As per the agreement with the private thermal plants that have come up in the state, Powercom is supposed to purchase power even by keeping its own plants idle or pay compensation. This is a big fraud," he said.

The leader claimed that public sector thermal plants were being run below capacity to purchase power from these private plants.
He questioned the motive of the state government entering into such agreements at the behest of the Deputy Chief Minister, who had been instrumental in this private sector investment.
He demanded that that all the power purchase agreements signed with these companies, along with generation capacity of the public sector plants with per unit cost of generation must be made public.

He alleged that this was the biggest scam of this government, with the reduction of public sector power generation to about 9,500 million units in 2015-16 as compared to 16,500 million units in 2012-13.

This reduction was due to power purchase from the private plants, he said.
The PPP chief said that none would disagree that progress was not possible without adequate availability of power but the same could not be done by bleeding the public sector units as this burden would have to borne by the people ultimately.
He called for a probe by an independent agency into this scam, adding that it should also be explained as to why more plants had not been set up in the public power sector.