Cong creates chaos at DERC meet, demands free power

The Delhi Congress disrupted the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Authority’s public meeting on Friday and demanded waiver of power bills in lieu of massive outages. 

Party’s state unit chief Arvinder Singh Lovely and four-time former MLA Mukesh Sharma reached the DERC’s public meeting at Siri Fort Auditorium at about 11 am and asked the commission to reapply the subsidies on lower slabs. 

“If the discoms and Power Department are not able to ensure uninterrupted power supply, the DERC must ensure that the consumers should get a rebate on their electricity bills in lieu of hours-long outages,” Sharma said.

The meeting was organised to hear public opinion on various issue including proposed hike in power tariff.

Police officials stopped the Congress leaders when they tried to climb up the dais where the DERC officials were present.

“The DERC should distribute the benefits derived from the total stoppage of power thefts to the people. The domestic power consumers in Delhi should be given power at the rate of Rs 2.50 to Rs 3.50 per unit up to 800 units of power consumption,” Sharma said.

The leaders staged a sit-in and shouted slogans against the BJP and AAP and accused them for power crisis in the city. The police arrested the leaders who interrupted the meeting. They were later released.

Meanwhile, Delhiites got no respite from unscheduled outages. 

Peak load during the last 24 hours was 5,524 Megawatt. The drawl of power from generating stations with in Delhi was 1,287 MW.  

Drawl from central sector stations was 4,237 MW. The under drawl at the time of this report was 110 MW which led to 1.19 per cent of outages,” Delhi Transco said in a statement.

The Transco officials claimed that the Badarpur Thermal Power Station (BTPS)-Noida-Ghazipur 220 KV line, which was snapped due to the massive thunderstorm, has been revived completely. 

The same line was causing unscheduled outages in east Delhi.