Mumbai: With a number of cities in Maharashtra experiencing power cuts, the Opposition has made an issue of ‘load-shedding’ and held the state government responsible for it. Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leaders have warned of a statewide protest if the power situation continues. Meanwhile, the state government admitted that demand exceeded the state’s capacity by 3,000MW.  

“When the government came to power, the state was free from load-shedding. We had promised a load-shedding-free Maharashtra and achieved that by 2012. But this government’s failure has brought back load-shedding in the state. This government will have to supply power without any cuts to all the people. Otherwise, we will launch a statewide agitation,” said NCP leader Ajit Pawar.

The Opposition claimed the shortage of power was linked to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) “attempt to stay in power in poll-bound states”. “The-re are reports that the pow-er that is taken from the national grid has become costlier. This is

because Rajasthan, Mad-hya Pradesh and Chhatti-sgarh are buying power from the grid with very high rates. So the failure of the BJP to generate power in those states are hurting the interests of Maharashtra,” said NCP leader Jitendra Awhad.

Congress state chief Ashok Chavan slammed the state government for its “failure to provide relief to the people. “The people are facing severe heat. An uncut power supply would have given them relief. But the state government is applying load-shedding. This is rubbing salt in the people’s wounds,” he said.

Reacting to the criticism and reports of load-shedding, power minister Chandrashekhar Bawa-nkule said, “There are many villages where the pending amount of power bills is very high. The amount is as high as Rs 35,000 crore. Out of these, Rs 32,000 crore are farmers’. Rs 3,000 crore are of streetlight etc. So, we have decided to start a shedding in a pockets where there area large number of pending bills.”