Over 27 lakh power workers take to the streets against discom privatisation in UP

New Delhi: Over 27 lakh electricity workers staged protest across the country on Thursday against the privatisation of two discoms in Uttar Pradesh, engineers' body AIPEF said.

The Uttar Pradesh government has decided to privatise Purvanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (PVVNL) and Dakshinanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd (DVVNL), which cover 42 out of 75 districts of the state, said Shailendra Dubey, Chairman of All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF).

Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited and some big officials of the government are in collusion with selected private houses. They want to sell discom assets worth lakhs of crores of rupees to private houses at throw away prices, Dubey alleged.

They said that due to wrong power purchase agreements in Uttar Pradesh, discoms have to pay Rs 6,761 crore annually to private power generation companies without purchasing a single unit of electricity, he said.

The losses have mounted because of department itself, Dubey said adding there are so many benefits that the poor and farmers get in the state which will be taken away from them post privatisation.

The chairman said if the government does not stop with the privatisation, the workers will continue with their agitation across the country which will affect operations.

Demonstrations were held mainly at Hyderabad, Trivandrum, Vijayawada, Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Nagpur, Raipur, Bhopal, Jabalpur, Vadodara, Rajkot, Guwahati, Shillong, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Ranchi, Srinagar, Jammu, Shimla, Dehradun, Patiala, Jaipur, Kota, Hisar and Lucknow.