Power connections issue rocks Vidhan Sabha session

Chandigarh, February 14

 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA from Sunam Aman Arora on Thursday brought to the notice of the House about the issue of disconnection of power in government schools in view of the power bills pending against them. Making an answer in this regard, power minister, Gurpreet Singh Kangar replied that connections of 14 schools had to be cut due to non-payment of the bills pending against them.

The minister further clarified stating that electricity bill of as many as 4130 government schools comes to Rs 1684.87 per annum. Upon this, Arora recalled that during the last Assembly session, the education minister had quoted saying there were a total of 19289 schools, while the Power minister make a contradictory statement putting the figure at 15,000 schools, which implies that there were electricity connections in 15,000 schools or were using ‘kundi’ connections. Upon this, the Speaker had to intervene, asking the minister to be categorical in his answer. Arora urged the chief minister, through the chair, to look into the matter as soon as possible and mull over a waiver and restore electricity connection so that students did suffer.