Perturbed over long hours of power cuts in seven districts of Jharkhand - including, Dhanbad, Bokaro, Giridih, Chatra, Hazaribagh, Ramgarh and Koderma, a group of 75 hard coke facotry owners of the state have written Raj Kumar Singh, Union Minister of State (Independent charge), Power, New and Renewable energy expressing resentment and shock over the alleged arm twisting technique used by Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC).
BN Singh, president of Industries and Commerce Association (ICA), the oldest trade and commerce body of the state that represents the 75 hard coke manufacturing units said that they have also written to the minister against unexpected treatment from a PSU in the past.
“Such power cuts put hardships on citizens,” Singh pointed out in his letter and added that the same applies to indusrial units and coporations in the state for whom long power cuts cause massive disruption of production processes.
“DVC depends on Jharkhand for coal but it is highly illogical that if a state government is not able to pay dues, people of the state are made to suffer on this pretext,” he said adding it seems that DVC is an entity that is independent of any control and can do anything it wants.
“There can be other ways of recovering dues from a state government rather than doing things wrongly,” the letter adds.
"The association seeks your attention at the earliest to take up the matter with DVC as well as the state government and sort out the problems amicably by arbitrating under the ambit of law rather than thretening a duly elected state government and punishing the people of state who are caught in the cross fire," it states.
Talking to The Telegraph Online on this issue, Singh, said, “The hard coke factory owners of the region are already suffering due to short supply of coal by Coal India and the power crisis is further affecting them."
Notably, DVC has taken to over 10 hours of load shedding in seven districts of Jharkhand falling under its purview since December 6 in order to realise its dues worth over Rs 2100 crore lying with the Jharkhand Bijli Vitran Nigam Limited.