PM's claim false, farms get power for only eight hours: Gujarat Congress

A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in London that Gujarat started getting 24/ 7 power supply under the BJP rule, the Gujarat Congress said that the claim was false.

Former Gujarat Congress president Arjun Modhwadia said that Gujarat was supplying round-the-clock electricity since 1980, much before the BJP came to power in state.

"Even farmers used to get electricity 24 x 7, but the supply has been reduced to eight hours under the BJP government. As against this, states like Pondicherry, Goa, Kerala, Odisha, Uttarakhand and MP supply round-the-clock electricity to farmers, West Bengal for 23 hours, and eight other states get power for 9 to 20 hours in a day. Gujarat ranks 16th among states," Modhwadia told reporters.

He said that more than four lakh farmers in the state are still waiting for an electricity connection.

The senior leader alleged that private power producers were flourishing in Gujarat at the cost of state-owned power producers. He said that the state had purchased electricity worth Rs47,000 crore from private companies in the last six years. "Capacity of state-owned GUVNL went up by only 1,473 MW between 2001-02 and 2016-17, but generation of power is kept low for the benefit of private companies," Modhwadia alleged, while stressing that price of power in the state is also much higher than the other states.

He said that power tariff in Gujarat is higher than as many as 15 states, including Andhra Pradesh, TN, J&K, WB and Madhya Pradesh.