The Hindu : New Delhi News : MLAs to take part in Bijli Adalat tomorrow

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Sep 08, 2006

New Delhi

New Delhi

MLAs to take part in Bijli Adalat tomorrow

Staff Reporter

It will be the first time that such an event attracts political leadership

NEW DELHI: To highlight "indifferent attitude" and "faulty working" of the private distribution companies in the Capital, non-government organisation People's Action and United Residents' Joint Action (URJA) are jointly organising a "Bijli Adalat" at Jantar Mantar here this coming Saturday.

"The `Bijli Adalat' is an attempt to collate the growing evidence of misappropriation in the power privatisation deal and the attendant problems which will become a matter for public interest litigants as well as an exhibition of the extent of corruption and malpractices in the contract and operation of the discoms,'' said Sanjay Kaul, president of People's Action, terming the whole event as a "carnival of complaints''.

Leadership

Interestingly, it will be the first time that such an event will attract the political leadership from various parties including the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Nationalist Congress Party.

The author of the Public Accounts Committee report of the Delhi Assembly on privatisation of power, S.C. Vats, who is now the Chairman of the Petitions Committee, will also attend the meeting to get a first hand feedback of complaints.

People's Action group coordinator Pankaj Gupta said there would be different stalls for each kind of complaint such as over-billing, harassment, meter replacements, fast moving meters, billing errors, poor power supply, bad condition of transformers, poor lighting of colonies, power cuts and behaviour of service contractors.

Accordingly, there will be advocates to facilitate classification of cases and then a scrutiny will be carried out and the cases used for compiling a casebook on the issue. People's Action has also asked consumer court lawyers and Right to Information specialists to be on the spot to advise consumers on taking their complaints forward.

Widespread

Dr. Vats will receive complaints and these will be forwarded through the attending MLAs including the NCP MLA from Badarpur, Ramvir Singh Bidhuri, Vidhan Sabha Deputy Speaker Shoaib Iqbal, and the BJP MLA from Saket, Vijay Jolly.

Mr. Kaul said they intend to file this compendium with President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to draw their attention to the widespread disenchantment with the power privatisation in Delhi and to ask for a CBI enquiry into the power reforms deal.

The residents' welfare associations which met under the auspices of URJA zonal committee meetings last week have also endorsed the "Bijli Adalat'' as a potent idea to establish the extent of problems faced by residents and power consumers in the Capital.

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