PANAJI
Giving a perceptional boost to his fledgling Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) concerted ground campaign in Goa ahead of the 2022 assembly election due in February-March next year, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced a 4-pronged electricity package if his party is elected to power -- 300 units electricity free to households, uninterrupted 24x7 supply, free power to all farmers and waiver of arrears.
“I’m here to give the first guarantee on electricity. We’ll provide 300 units of free electricity in Goa. With the implementation of this scheme, 87 per cent of Goa will start getting zero electricity bills. Old bills will be waived off. We’ll provide 24x7 electricity,” Kejriwal announced at a press conference in the capital city winding up his two-day visit to the State.
Kejriwal had arrived in Goa on Tuesday and triggered speculation in political and media circles of a realignment of forces after the Dhavalikar brothers of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) met him at the city hotel where he was put up.
At the press conference on Wednesday, Kejriwal said his announcement on the electricity policy if AAP is elected to govern Goa is a “solemn guarantee” and not an election time ‘promise’ of the kind other political parties give and later call them
“chunavi jumla”.
“When Kejriwal says something, it gets done,” the Delhi Chief Minister said, adding that all these things have been promised after our experience in implementing it in Delhi and studying in detail Goa’s power sector.
He said, despite Goa being a power-surplus State, there are frequent power cuts and erroneous and high billing, according to the feedback our party has got by extensively going to the nooks and corners of the State and interacting with people.
On the question of domestic consumers accumulating arrears over disputes in billing, Kejriwal said: “All outstanding bills will be waived off. We will start with a
clean slate.”
Kejriwal, who is also AAP national convener, has made the same promises in Punjab and Uttarakhand, States slated to also go to the polls along with Goa probably in February-March next year.
In Uttarakhand also, Kejriwal had on Sunday made the same announcement of 300 units of free electricity to every household, pending bills waiver and free power to farmers besides uninterrupted, 24x7 supply.
He made the same promises in June in Punjab, where AAP is the principal Opposition party and the State is facing a severe power crisis due to the heatwave as also high billing.
Kejriwal said the AAP government worked the experiment in Delhi and it worked.
“In the first one-and-half year, I and my power minister put in a lot of hard work going into gullies to identify faulty cables, power transformers and other infrastructure and we got them replaced and repaired. It was possible to succeed in Delhi only because of the hard work,” Kejriwal said adding that the experiment in Delhi has been a success.
He added, that Goa’s power woes are simply because the distribution network is neglected and can easily be streamlined.
“There is no dearth of power. It simply does not reach your homes because of poor distribution,” Kejriwal said.
