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Free electricity sop fizzles out?

Thursday, 15 July 2021 | PNS | Dehradun

The issue not discussed in the meeting of state cabinet on Wednesday

The euphoria generated by the Power minister Harak Singh Rawat on free electricity seems to have died with the Uttarakhand cabinet not even discussing the issue in its meeting held on Wednesday.

Rawat in his first meeting with the officers of the department of power had said that 100 units of electricity would be provided free of cost per month to the consumers in Uttarakhand. He also promised that a 50 per cent tariff would be charged from the consumers whose monthly consumption is between 100 to 200 units. In the meeting the minister had also directed the officers of the department to prepare a proposal for providing free electricity to the consumers.  More than 13 lakh consumers in Uttarakhand were coming within the ambit of the relief announced by the minister.

However the announcement was met with scepticism since the all important announcement in the state -where assembly elections are less than six months away- was made by a minister and not by the chief minister (CM).  The CM Pushkar Singh Dhami himself cleared the air on the issue by stating that the state government has no such plan. This forthright view by the CM forced Harak Singh Rawat to take a U turn on the subject and he stated that he had made no such announcement.  Rawat also clarified that he had asked the department to prepare a proposal on free electricity and the state cabinet would take a decision on it. However in the meeting of the state cabinet in its meeting held on Wednesday the issue of free electricity was not even discussed. 

The Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal also did his bit on the issue during his recent visit to Dehradun in which he asserted that when voted to power the AAP government would provide 300 units of free electricity in a month to the people of Uttarakhand. Going a step further he claimed that pending bills of consumers would be waived off and the farmers too would get free electricity.

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