The government has issued appointment letters to 50 junior engineers. An official spokesman said that the recruitment of assistant engineers would start from January 27 next.

The deadlock between the Uttar Pradesh government and striking electricity employees entered the tenth day as negotiations on Sunday failed to find any breakthrough as the government ruled out any possibility of withdrawal of the notification issued about power reforms on the midnight of Janaury 14.

An official spokesman told UNI on Monday that the power reforms in the state would not be held back and the employees should negotiate on other issues. A fresh round of talks is likely to take place again later in the day, he added.

He said so far 2,000 striking engineers andemployees had been shown the door. The advertisement for fresh recruitment was published in the newspapers on Sunday. He said 6,000 engineering from ITI had been shortlisted for appointment as junior engineers and 50 of them were issued the appointment letters on Monday.

The government was also contemplating withdrawal of all the facilities provided to the engineers whose services had been terminated. Sub-ordinate Engineers Association of the Maharashtra State Electricity Board Workers' Federation and its allies went on a one-day token strike to express solidarity with the striking powermen in Uttar Pradesh.

According to sources in Mumbai, around 70,000 employees of MSEB, affiliated with the Central Union Employees Associations, Intuc and BMS, have participated in the strike.

However, work in the state was not affected as alternate arrangements were done as a precautionary measure by MSEB, the sources said.

The strikers have demanded a stop to the process of privatisation of electricity boards as itwould bring large-scale increase in electricity tariffs and damage interests of the people and the electricity employees.

If the problem of the Uttar Pradesh Electricity Board employees was not solved, they would chalk out their future course of action, the sources added.

According to the spokesman, thermal power generation in the state was 1,544mw and hydro generation about 200 mw. With the import of 2,400 mw power the state was comfortable as far as the availability of power was concerned, he claimed. Meanwhile, the state government continued to act tough with the employees disrupting work. A total of 6,800 employees had so far been arrested at various places in the state, the spokesman said.

No blackout in Capital
With the Delhi Vidyut Board engineers not joining the one-day token strike called by the All-India Power Engineers Federation on Monday, Delhi power minister Narendra Nath expressed the optimism about the city not facing any power crisis as a fallout of the ongoing stir by poweremployees in Uttar Pradesh. "None of the DVB engineers have goine on strike. The situation in the capital is normal,'' Nath told UNI.

DVB chairman Jagdish Sagar said that contingency measures had been put in place to deal with any untoward situation. However, he refused to give any details. Ruling out any adverse fall-out of the up stir on Delhi, official sources said as Delhi was receiving the bulk of its power supply from the NTPC plants, there was little effect of the developments in the neighbouring state.

Meanwhile, the All-India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) has threatened to resume the nationwide agitation anytime after the Republic Day if the stalemate between the Uttar Pradesh government and its striking power sector workers continued .In a statement here, association secretary DK Puri claimed that the strike was complete in Punjab, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh while a work-to-rule agitation was resorted to in other states.