The Uttar Pradesh government’s decision to privatise two discoms in the state has not gone down well with power workers, who resorted to staging protests across the country on Thursday.
Over 27 lakh of them took to the streets in Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Bhopal, Kolkata, Jammu, Shimla, Patiala, Jaipur, Hisar, and Lucknow among other cities in India, informed engineers’ body, All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF).
Chairperson of AIPEF, Shailendra Dubey, said the Uttar Pradesh government had decided to privatise Purvanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (PVVNL) and Dakshinanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (DVVNL), which cover 42 out of 75 districts of the state.
Alleging that Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited and some big officials of the government were in collusion with selected private houses, Dubey said the group wanted to sell discom assets worth lakhs of crores of rupees to private houses at throwaway prices.
Dubey said discoms in UP had to cough up ₹6,761 crore annually to private power generation companies without purchasing a single unit of electricity only because of wrongful power purchase agreements in the state.
It’s the department’s fault that losses were mounting, Dubey said, adding that privatisation will take away the rightful benefits of both the poor and the farmers in the state.
Threatening the government of continued agitation if it didn’t roll back its decision, Dubey agreed operations were bound to suffer.
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