Even as employees of the electricity department in Chandigarh called off their three-day strike against privatisation after an almost 36 hour blackout that paralysed the Union Territory (UT), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Punjab senior leader Harpal Singh Cheema on Wednesday said the decision to privatise the UT’s power Department shows the anti-people policy of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and nefarious plan to sell the country to a few capitalists.

The AAP leader said that there was no reason for the government to privatise a government department which was running at a profit of over Rs 200 Crore but the BJP government is once again benefitting its ‘corporate friends’ at the expense of common people.

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Cheema said it was not a matter of a single state or single public sector. “The manner in which the Central government has sold the public sectors for pennies to their favourite capitalists is worrisome and the people should oppose it outright,” he said.

Citing the privatisation of government airline, LIC, railways, banks and telecommunications, Cheema said if this policy of the National Democratic Alliance government was not opposed and stopped at times it will be fatal for common people and our economy. Cheema said during the Corona pandemic, we experienced how the private sector works for its own benefit without caring about the people and exploiting them financially in case of helplessness.

“That is why public sectors were set up where people pay taxes and in return the government provides them basic facilities. The BJP government continuously increased the tax burden on the common people and when it came time to use that tax for the benefit of the people, the anti-people party sold the public sectors to the private players,” he said. The AAP leader said like BJP and Shiromani Akali Dal, Congress has always been in favour of privatisation and they’ve proved it in Punjab time and again.

He said today the power department of Chandigarh was being sold at a much lower rate than its actual price despite being in huge profit, similarly the public sectors of Punjab and other states would be sold tomorrow. Cheema said the SAD-BJP government in Punjab had signed expensive PPAs (Power Purchase Agreement) which were still costing the people of Punjab.