UP districts get 'powerful punishment' post-Modi win

UP districts get 'powerful punishment' post-Modi win

Before the Lok Sabha polls, Azamgarh, a district in the eastern region of the state about 275 kilometers from here, had been experiencing 10 to 12  hours of power cut every day.

However, now it has been receiving almost round-the-clock power supply since the elections.

Incidentally, Samajwadi Party (SP) supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav is the new representative of Azamgarh in the Lok Sabha. Mulayam scraped past Bharatiya Janata Party’s Ramakant Yadav by a little over 62,000  votes in a keenly contested election. 

UP has been experiencing acute power shortage since the polls, and the issue has threatened to turn into a major law and order problem with reports of power officials being thrashed and kept hostage at several places in past few days.

While the rural areas have been getting power supply for merely six to seven hours per day, barring a few VIP districts which are either home towns of the ruling family or have one of them as their representatives, almost the entire state has been experiencing prolonged power cuts.

UP Power corporation sources said that Azamgarh, Etawah, the home district of Mulayam, Kannauj from where Akhilesh’s wife Dimple Yadav is the MP and Mainpuri, represented by Mulayam himself have been exempted from power cuts. 

Even Varanasi, from where the Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi has won the elections, has been getting power for ten to twelve hours only. 

People in Varanasi held demonstrations at several places in protest against erratic power supply on Thursday and Friday, according to the reports.

The officials said that there has been a sharp increase in the demand following rise in the temperature while the supply has been affected after a few units stopped production owing to technical snags. 

Major problem

The issue is threatening to snowball into a major law and order problem, as angry mobs thrashed power officials in many parts of the state and even kept them hostage for several hours. 

The opposition leaders say that the state government is ‘punishing’ the people of the districts who voted for the BJP.

However, the officials attributed the shortage to reduction in supply though they did not have any answer to the exemption given to some districts.