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Walkout over power crisis

By Our Staff Correspondent

BHOPAL, MARCH 10. There was a furore in the State Assembly today and the entire Opposition staged a walkout protesting against the Madhya Pradesh Government's failure to ensure uninterrupted power supply for the sake of students during their examination period.

The issue was raised through a calling attention notice by the Congress MLA, Sajjan Singh Verma. After he had read out his notice, the Minister of State for Energy, Jagdeesh Dewda, said that power cuts could not be avoided due to a huge gap between demand and supply. He further told the House that additional power was being purchased to tide over the power crisis especially keeping in view the requirements of farmers and students.

The Minister said that a new power supply schedule had been introduced in the rural and urban areas of the State from February 14 onwards. Under this arrangement, there is a scheduled power cut for the industrial sector during the peak demand period from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. every day and every effort were being made to ensure uninterrupted power supply for students between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. Mr. Dewda said that power supply gets disrupted due to unavoidable circumstances. To drive home his point, he cited a recent example and said that the power supply in the entire western grid, which covers Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Daman and Diu, had collapsed recently as the frequency had dipped below the permissible limit due to excessive gap between supply and demand. The western grid had tripped on February 28 as a sub-station linked with Maharashtra's Koradi Thermal Power Station had caught fire, he pointed out. Mr. Verma, who had brought up this issue for discussion, strongly reacted to the Energy Minster's reply and said that newspapers have been reporting that students were even being forced to write their exams in candle light.

When the leader of Opposition, Jamuna Devi, stood up to speak, many opposition MLAs, including Ramlakhan Sharma of CPI(M), Sunilam of Samajwadi Party, Arif Aqueel and Govind Singh of Congress, rushed to the well of the House shouting slogans. The opposition later staged a walkout.

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Walkout over power crisis

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