Centre hits back with data to short-circuit UP's power talk

NEW DELHI: Power play ahead of any election is nothing new. Residents of any power-starved state will tell you that the supply situation improves drastically -sometimes even to 24x7 electricity -before polling, only to relapse into periods of long blackouts once voting is over.

So what is the high-decibel war of words between the BJP and Samajwadi Party over electricity supply in Uttar Pradesh all about? While the BJP has claimed darkness all around, the SP has hit back with claims of 24-hour supply to Varanasi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha constituency.

Latest ground data collected by Prayas, a Pune-based independent NGO, indicates that the state government may have been making tall claims and the reality is quite different. Prayas collects power supply data from specific towns across the country.

A look at the Prayas data on power supply in the week before and after voting in areas covered in the first two phases of assembly polls clearly shows a sharp rise in the duration of blackouts after polls.Data shows even Varanasi is not without blackouts, with some areas such as Sundarpur, Pandeypur, Sarang Talab and Shivpur experiencing almost 8-10 hours of outage for the last three months.

"The Uttar Pradesh government has been caught on several fronts. The state utili ty simply stopped releasing data on power cuts. But it is clear that the claims of regular power supply were wrong.The Prime Minister's comments on bias in development and selective power supply have proved to be correct," said urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu.

Power ministry officials said data provided by the state government in August 2016 showed UP had more than twice the number of power cuts and seven times longer outages compared to the national average.

With such a dismal record, no wonder since then, power ministry officials said, the state government stopped sharing data data for the Centre's Urja app that provides countrywide supply position in real time.

"While supply outages go on, the Uttar Pradesh government neither tells the truth nor supplies power," power minister Piyush Goyal posted on Facebook.

Though UP was among the first lot of states to sign up for the Centre's turnaround scheme for discoms, it is yet to sign the 'Power for All' document which creates a roadmap and gives a sort of political and financial commitment to supply electricity to all consumers. It is estimated that 1.6 crore out of the three crore rural households in the state don't have electricity connections. Ministry officials claimed the state government has failed to sign the 'Power for All' document in spite of five reminders in 13 months and several follow-up meetings with state government officials in between.

The net result is long blackouts. According to data collected by Prayas, Shivpur area in Varanasi in logged power cuts of 248 hours in the period between January 19 to February 19, averaging approximately eight hours of outage daily.