NEW DELHI: Reviewing the three years of privatisation of the power sector in the Capital, the Leader of the Opposition in the Delhi Assembly, Jagdish Mukhi, said over the weekend that it had only resulted in inflated bills, fast running meters, yearly hikes in power tariffs and harassment of the common man. "It is a big sham played on the people by the Delhi Government to benefit certain private companies," he charged.

Stating that three years of privatisation had brought nothing but bad times for the people of Delhi, Mr. Mukhi said the only ones to have benefited were the power companies who had fleeced the Government by inflating and fudging their records. Now the discoms were threatening the consumers with imposition of heavy penalties for over-drawing power.

Mr. Mukhi said it was unfortunate that the office of the Special Secretary (Power), Arun Goyal, was used to issue threats to lakhs of consumers of Delhi and the discoms virtually took over the conference convened by Transco.

"What was even more surprising was that there was no redressal of grievances of consumers who were left to fend for themselves. As for the Delhi Government, it had openly sided with the private discoms and was always rising in their defence," he said.

Accusing Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit of making "false and misleading promises", Mr. Mukhi said the promise of providing power cut free Delhi had fallen flat. "Load-shedding, power cuts and harassment have become the order of the day and for all the wrongs in the system, the innocent consumers are being blamed. The call centres set up by these discoms hardly attend to complaint."

Warning against any further tariff hike, Mr. Mukhi said his party would take to the streets if such a thing happened.

Mr. Mukhi said at present nearly 70 per cent of the streetlights were non-functional but there was no one in the Government or the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission to point this out to the private discoms. He said the Comptroller and Auditor General had already pointed to misappropriation of funds and following of wrong procedure in privatisation of the power sector in the Capital.

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