A section of Uttar Pradesh Power Department staff said on Thursday that they will protest if the Center moves forward with the Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2020 without hearing their concerns properly. The UP Power Engineers Association President V P Singh told reporters that any attempt to rush the bill into Parliament without giving the parties concerned an adequate opportunity would be opposed to tooth and nail.
“15 lakh employees and engineers of power department of the country including large chunk of employees and engineers of UP would be forced to adopt agitational approach, if they would not be heard properly,” he said.
The government should first disclose the basic purpose of the proposed bill, he added.”We are opposed to the bill, since it gives inkling of privatization,” he said. Since the impact of any amendment or privatization would be on masses, the government should know the mind of masses concerning parties, including different organisations, he suggested.
The official claimed that the procedure adopted to obtain competition from the Member States was also not transparent. The Union Power Minister will hold a meeting of the Power Ministers of the States on Friday, via videoconferencing, even though the Chief Ministers or the Power Ministers of the 11 States have expressed their reservations in letters which show that the exercise is a formality only, he claimed. As the time allocated to the Minister’s video conferencing is only 35 minutes, Prabhat Singh, Secretary-General of the UP Power Engineers Association, questioned how the representatives of the different States would raise their objections in such a short time.
All India Power Engineers Federation Chairman Shailendra Dubey suggested that the government refer the proposed bill to the Standing Committee on Power for further discussion. “By completing the formality through video conferencing “, he said, “would invite wrath of consumers of UP who have first-hand experience of poor performance of power supply in Agra by a private company”.
