Congress walkout over changes in hydel policy

  • | Wednesday | 29th August, 2018

But before he could complete his reply, Congress legislators started raising slogans against the government and walked out of the House. He accused the previous Congress regime of lowering the upfront premium charged from hydel projects from Rs 20 lakh to Rs 1 lakh. SHIMLA: On the issue of amendments to the hydel policy by the BJP government, the Congress not only created a ruckus inside the assembly but it also staged a walkout, raising slogans against the state government, without waiting for the reply of power minister Anil Sharma to be completed. Earlier on the issue, the ruling and opposition sides had locked horns in the assembly after the Congress had raised the issue.Leader of Opposition Mukesh Agnihotri and senior legislator Harshvardhan Chauhan termed the amendments to the policy as anti-state. He asked the opposition why they did not think about the interests of Himachal Pradesh then.

SHIMLA: On the issue of amendments to the hydel policy by the BJP government, the Congress not only created a ruckus inside the assembly but it also staged a walkout, raising slogans against the state government, without waiting for the reply of power minister Anil Sharma to be completed. Earlier on the issue, the ruling and opposition sides had locked horns in the assembly after the Congress had raised the issue.Leader of Opposition Mukesh Agnihotri and senior legislator Harshvardhan Chauhan termed the amendments to the policy as anti-state. They also claimed that the amendments would cause a huge loss to the state exchequer. Agnihotri said the state government seemed to be protecting the interest of the capitalist class. He said it was not a right decision to scrap the royalty of 12% free power from hydro projects.In his reply, Anil Sharma rejected the opposition allegations by terming them unfounded. He said the only decision taken was for the deferment of free power quantum for the critical period of initial 12 years for all allotted projects except for commissioned projects and free power royalty @ 12% uniformly for the entire agreement period for the projects to be allotted. He accused the previous Congress regime of lowering the upfront premium charged from hydel projects from Rs 20 lakh to Rs 1 lakh. He asked the opposition why they did not think about the interests of Himachal Pradesh then. He said in the hydel sector, Himachal Pradesh had competition with Uttrakhand and Jammu & Kashmir.He further said in 2008-09, power produced in Himachal Pradesh was being sold for Rs 7 per unit while today it was being sold for Rs 3 and Rs 3.5 per unit and so under such a scenario changes were necessary. Attacking the opposition, he said Congress legislators were presenting figures about the losses but they should tell when upfront premium was lowered by them, how many projects actually came to the state.He said during the previous Congress regime only 9 projects came to the state and if upfront premium was not lowered, the state would have earned a revenue of Rs 27.25 crore. But before he could complete his reply, Congress legislators started raising slogans against the government and walked out of the House.

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