The Aam Aadmi Party chief also claimed that Delhiites are paying two times the electricity bills they should actually be paying. He accused Dikshit of stopping the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) from passing an order in 2010 which recommended 23 per cent reduction in the tariff.
"The then DERC chief Brijender Singh was to pass an order on May 5, 2010 but the Delhi Government wrote a letter to Brijender Singh on May 4 under pressure from discoms and stopped him from issuing the order," he told a press conference here.
Reacting to the allegations, Dikshit's office termed them as "bunch of lies". "The allegations are a bundle of lies," her office said.
Power Minister Harun Yusuf said Kejriwal was trying to "sensationalise the issue as he did not say anything new".
"The allegations are totally baseless. The tariff order he was referring to was not signed by all the three members of the DERC. So you cannot call it a tariff order. Even Delhi High court had held that it was not a DERC order," Yusuf told PTI.
Circulating copies of the letter written by Joint Secretary (Power) S M Ali on May 4 to Singh, Kejriwal said the order had concluded that discoms were making "huge profits" and that the power tariffs in the capital should be reduced by 23 per cent rather than increased.
"The power companies had projected Rs 630 crores of losses for the year 2010-11 and they wanted electricity tariffs to be increased to recover that. However, Singh had concluded that they would make profits of Rs 3,577 crores which if passed on to the consumers would result in 23 per cent reduction," Kejriwal alleged. (More)
