Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Punjab president and chief ministerial candidate Bhagwant Mann on Friday accused Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi of misleading people on the issue of power purchase agreements (PPAs).

Mann said that the announcement of canceling the power purchase agreements has not been implemented even today, but the Channi government has spent crores of rupees from the exchequer to advertise the cancellation of PPAs. He alleged like Badals and Captain Amarinder Singh, Channi government also fixed its commission (brokerage) in power purchase and colluded with private power companies.

Mann said Punjab Congress president Navjot Singh Sidhu and Channi used to claim that if they came to power, they would immediately cancel the power agreements, but that did not happen. They will have to answer to the people about it now, he said.

He said the Punjab government is still buying about 7000 Mega Watt of power from the three private thermal plants at Rajpura, Talwandi Sabo and Goindwal Sahib at the same old prices.

The previous Akali-BJP and Congress governments did not create their own sources for power generation. And by using government resources, private companies are selling electricity to the government at expensive prices. To hide the failure of his government, Chief Minister Channi pulled drama to cancel the expensive power purchase agreements.

Mann said Channi, while announcing a decrease in electricity rates for domestic consumers, said the agreement of Goindwal Thermal Power Plant has been cancelled. Now the Punjab government will buy electricity at Rs. 2.38 and sell it at Rs. 2.65 per unit.

“But this announcement turned out to be a complete lie. The reality is that even today electricity is being purchased from that thermal plant at the rate of Rs Six to Rs Seven per unit. The purpose of this announcement was to mislead the people of Punjab,” the AAP leader said.

On the announcement of CM to waive the pending electricity bills, Mann said on 29 September 2021, the Channi government had announced to waive off the domestic electricity arrears of up to two kilo watt, but in the name of waiving the outstanding bills, the Congress government only waived off the electricity bills of its MLAs and ministers. Mann said the Aam Aadmi Party government would waive off outstanding electricity bills as well as provide 300 units of free electricity per month to domestic consumers.