With the rain gods unkind at Uttar Pradesh, which resulted in high temperature, the tempers too are shooting northwards, with people turning violent to protest acute power cuts in the state. Not only has power-play become a law and order issue, but also a hot topic for politics, with both the Mayawati government and the UPA at the Centre, trading charges on each other to score brownie points.
On Tuesday when the people of Amethi, the VVIP constituency, represented in the Lok Sabha by Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi, took to the streets to agitate against the severe power shortage rict and the police resorted to cane-charge and also fired tear gas to control the mob. The issue has not only drawn censure from Governor TV Rajeswar but also reverberated in Parliament on Wednesday, with questions being raised on the state government.
As a result of this simmering tension, chief minister Mayawati ordered a magisterial inquiry into the incident and also transferred the SP of Sultanpur for not handling the situation properly. The CM directed the removal of the PAC personnel posted on the spot on the day of incident.
Attacking the Centre, Mayawati said that the electricity problem was the outcome of the Centre’s discriminatory attitude. Shooting off a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, she has demanded more allocation of power and new coal blocks to the state and also one ultra mega power project in the state.
Stating that her government had launched an ambitious plan to plug the power deficit and make the state power surplus by planning a capacity addition of 25000 mw of power by the end of the 12th Plan, Mayawati said that for this, the Centre needed to clear coal linkages so that work can be started off soon.
??I request you to intervene in the matter immediately and prevail upon the power and coal ministries to allocate more fuel and also allot at least one ultra mega power project to the state,?? she has written.
The gap between supply and demand in the state has shot up to over 3,000 mw, forcing the government to enforce unprecedented roistering.
