As many as seven districts of Jharkhand that are suffering acute power crisis owing to extended outages by Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) can heave a sigh of relief from Friday midnight as the power company has agreed to end the blackouts, on for several weeks now because of a protracted dispute over pending dues, after a high-level meeting with the state government.
Following summons from the state government over the crisis in about seven districts under the DVC command area, its chairman R N Singh was in Ranchi on Friday for a meeting chaired by the state education minister Jagarnnath Mahto and finance minister Rameshwar Oraon. Some MLAs too attended the meeting besides officials of the state energy department in a bid to work out a truce.
After the two-hour meeting, Mahto said, “The company has agreed to end power cuts from today midnight. Seamless supply of power will be provided to all DVC command districts. Common people and industries within the DVC command areas were in trouble due to 10-12 hours of power cuts. In some areas, it was even severe since DVC reasoned the stalemate to pending dues from the state government. For now, power cuts won’t take place from today midnight.”
On the ongoing payment row, Mahto added that from Monday onwards they will try to settle the disputes. He said, “DVC has been claiming that we owe them Rs 2100 crore in lieu of power consumption. Our claim, as per official records is that around Rs 1100-1200 is pending. Meanwhile, we have made payments in different installments. In 2016, the state government had also made bulk payment to end the dispute but to no avail. Hence, it has been decided that on Monday, we will start working to reach to a mutual understanding.”
Mahto however said that DVC also owes several crores to the state government under different heads.
“For example, surcharges like water, pollution and others are pending from DVC to us. So, we have urged them to pay our dues and we will settle theirs amicably,” he said, adding that on January 26, he had sent a communiqué through Bokaro administration to DVC headquarters asking the chairman to come to Ranchi for talks to end the logjam.
DVC chairman Singh on the other hand only said that the meeting was fruitful. “We are a service organisation and we hope to maintain good relations with everyone. The state government is already extending us all support,” he said.
Notably, BJP MLA Raj Sinha has been on a stir since Thursday in Dhanbad against power cuts. He has accused the Hemant Soren government of failing to solve the stalemate. On Friday, the ruling JMM and Congress held two separate agitations against the Union government blaming it for the crisis.
DVC supplies power to Dhanbad, Bokaro, Ramgarh, Koderma, Hazaribagh Chatra and Giridih.
