The Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday accused Delhi Power Minister Atishi of “lying” on the issue of electricity subsidy to farmers and demanded her resignation.
In a letter to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva also demanded compensation for farmers whose crops were affected by the unseasonal rains.
Ms. Atishi, at a press conference on Thursday, had alleged that the BJP and Lieutenant-Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena are putting “pressure” on Power Department officials to “stop the subsidy” given to farmers and lawyers.
In his letter, Mr. Sachdeva claimed that the government “does not provide even a single unit of electricity for free” to farmers and that Ms. Atishi’s claims were “false”.
“The government should apologise for this and you should take action against the Minister,” he wrote.
Seeking her resignation, Leader of the Opposition in the Delhi Assembly Ramvir Singh Bidhuri said instead of giving free electricity, the farmers are being charged exorbitant rates. “Farmers are getting electricity bills running into thousands of rupees for not using even a single unit of electricity,” he said at a press conference. He also showed copies of several electricity bills, claiming that some farmers got bills for more than ₹1 lakh.
Mr. Bidhuri said the party will stage a demonstration outside the Chief Minister’s residence on Saturday.
Mr. Sachdeva said, “Thousands of farmers have suffered a lot of damage to their crops due to the unseasonal rains in the last 10 days, especially last evening. In the last two years, farmers have suffered crop loss due to similar reasons but the Kejriwal government is yet to pay the promised compensation to most of them.”
He requested Mr. Kejriwal to conduct a survey of the loss caused to the farmers and declare a compensation of ₹1 lakh per acre.
Atishi meets farmers, lawyers
Meanwhile, Ms. Atishi met a delegation of farmers and lawyers to discuss the power subsidy issue and assured them that the government will continue to provide subsidised electricity.
“The government will continue to work towards ensuring that all citizens have access to basic amenities, including affordable electricity, and will not allow any conspiracy to disrupt this goal,” she told them.
The farmers from rural Delhi told her that being from the marginalised sections, the possibility of losing subsidised electricity has enraged them. The proposal to end the power subsidy scheme brought the Lieutenant-Governor is anti-farmer, they said.
Ms. Atishi said that officials of the Power Department have told her they are under a lot of pressure from the L-G and BJP leaders to stop the subsidy for lawyers. She assured the lawyers that the Delhi government will not end the subsidy for them.
Noting that the scheme has reduced their financial burden to a great extent, the lawyers said, “We will support the government in its every effort to keep it continuing.”
