Punjab Power Crisis: Protesting AAP workers face water cannons near Punjab CM's house

Led by Punjab AAP chief Bhagwant Mann, thousands of party workers gathered and started marching towards the farmhouse in Siswan, raising slogans.
Punjab Power Crisis: Protesting AAP workers face water cannons near Punjab CM's house
Punjab Power Crisis: Protesting AAP workers face water cannons near Punjab CM's house
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Thepolice on Saturday used water cannons to disperse the workers of Aam AadmiParty (AAP) who were protesting near Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh'sfarmhouse near Chandigarh against the statewide power outages.

Ledby Punjab AAP chief Bhagwant Mann, thousands of party workers gathered andstarted marching towards the farmhouse in Siswan, raising slogans.

Securitywas beefed up outside CM's Siswan Farmhouse since morning owing to AAP's scheduled protest.  And as the protest intensified andAAP worker broke barricades to gherao the CM's farmhouse, police started using water cannons to disperse thedemonstrators.

Facingsevere electricity crisis, the Punjab government curtailed timings ofgovernment offices from Friday, besides cutting down on power supply to highenergy consuming industries with immediate effect to save crops and ease thedomestic power situation.

AAPMLA and Youth Wing state president Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer said the main causefor the high cost and shortage of power is the wrong power purchase agreementsreached by the previous (Parkash Singh) Badal government with the privatethermal plants, which were not cancelled by the present Congress government.

"Justlike the Badals, the Amarinder Singh government is also taking bribes from thepower companies," he alleged.

Theprotest came days after AAP's national convenor Arvind Kejriwal promised freeelectricity up to 300 units and round-the-clock power supply in Punjab if theparty wins the Assembly elections slated early next year.

Aday earlier, the Shiromani Akali Dal had held statewide protests before theoffices of Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) to highlight theplight of the farmers, domestic consumers and industrialists, claiming thatthey are suffering because the Congress government has "deliberately"withheld the eight-hour free power supply to the farmers, besides imposingunscheduled power cuts in the urban areas.

Mockinghis own government in the state over the power outages, Congress leader andformer Cabinet minister Navjot Sidhu had said on Friday, "There is no needfor power cuts in Punjab or for the Chief Minister to regulate office timingsor AC use of the common people... If we act in the right direction."

Sidhu,in a series of back-to-back tweets, said, "Punjab already gives Rs 9,000crore power subsidy but Delhi gives only Rs 1,699 crore as power subsidy.

"IfPunjab copies the Delhi model, we will get merely Rs 1,600-2,000 crore assubsidy. To better serve the people of Punjab -- Punjab needs an originalPunjab model, not a copied Model!!"

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