Power shortages are likely to be the biggest election issue in the coming Assembly elections in Haryana, scheduled for October 13.
The supply of power is both inadequate and erratic. Industry gets only 6-7 hours of power supply a day. Entrepreneurs in industrial towns of Gurgaon, Panipat and Yamunanagar as well as industrial areas of other towns say they are disappointed over the slow progress of the government’s plans to enhance power supply.
Voters in the rural areas, too, have limited access to power. The Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Congress government envisaged increasing installed capacity from 4,000 Mw to 10,000 Mw in the Eleventh Five-Year Plan (2007-2012). Among the plants that were to be set up by the incumbent government are the Deen Bandhu Chhotu Ram Thermal Power Plant in Yamunanagar (600 Mw), Rajiv Gandhi Thermal Power Plant in Hissar (1,200 Mw), Jhajjar Thermal Plant (1,150 Mw), Aravali Thermal Plant (750 Mw), extension of the third unit of Yamunanagar plant (300 Mw) and a gas-based power plant (432 Mw) in Faridabad.
The power plant in Yamunanagar has been commissioned but there is a huge power gap of over 4,000 Mw. The gap has been increasing lately due to an increase in demand.
In June, the state government imposed a 16-hour power cut on industry that released about nine million additional units of power for domestic sectors like agriculture.
While making this announcement, state Power Minister Randeep Singh Surjewala had said the state government had been purchasing power at rates ranging from Rs 3 to Rs 12 per unit. He had attributed the crisis to the delayed monsoon and an unprecedented 15 per cent annual growth in the demand for power in the state against the national average of 8 per cent. The minister said the crisis had been aggravated by a surge in temperature and the early transplantation of paddy by farmers.
However, this was cold comfort for voters. In July, police had to resort to baton-charge in Jind where people took to the streets to protest against the long power cuts. They locked up officials of the state electricity board in a room and also torched government vehicles.
The Opposition parties in Haryana (Indian National Lok Dal-Shiromani Akali Dal alliance, BJP, Haryana Janhit Party and BSP) have been criticising the party in power for not taking appropriate steps to increase the power supply.
This apart, local factors like caste politics and other local development issues may favour some candidates of regional parties in the hinterland.
But the past record of the Congress (a landslide victory in the Lok Sabha elections in 2009 and the last Assembly and Lok Sabha elctions in 2004) has surely made the opposition jittery.
