NEW DELHI: Faced with a barrage of uncomfortable queries from her own party MLAs on failure of her Government to implement its promises to end the power and water crises in the Capital, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on Tuesday announced convening of a Congress Legislature Party meeting on December 17 to discuss these issues.

Interestingly, Tuesday's CLP meeting failed to arrive at any unanimous decision or pass any resolution in view of the strong opposition from a majority of the MLAs. In fact, the loyalists were far outnumbered by the dissidents who had their way in conducting the proceedings. For their part, the Delhi Mayor, Satbir Singh, Leader of the House, Jitendra Kochar, and Chairman of the Standing Committee, Mukesh Goyal, represented the MCD.

Coming out of the meeting, Mr. Kochar said he had raised the issue of power crisis and fast running meters. "I have made it clear that unless steps are taken to address these concerns, the party would have to pay very dearly in the civic body polls scheduled in early 2007,'' he added.

The MLAs sought to know what had happened to the Public Grievances Committee constituted under the leadership of the Kalkaji MLA, Subhash Chopra. At this Power Minister Haroon Yusuf informed that a meeting of the committee was convened immediately after its constitution, but Mr. Chopra could not attend and therefore it was cancelled. At this, Mr. Chopra got up and rebutted the Minister's claim stating that he had till date not got the terms and reference of the committee and he was not in a position to function under such circumstances. At this, Ms. Dikshit said the committee had no constitutional validity, but promised to notify the terms and reference by Wednesday.

In fact, one of the Ministers informed the meeting that it would be wrong on the part of the CLP to discuss issues like farmhouses misuse as there were not more than 30 farmhouses that stand affected by the new norms submitted before the court.

The Hastsaal MLA, Mukesh Sharma, said the Chief Secretary, who is also Principal Secretary, Power, had to chance his ways of dealing with elected representatives. He also sought to know what the Government was doing to provide relief to lakhs of people who had been affected by fast running meters and inflated bills.

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