AGARTALA: CPI (M) Tripura State Secretary Jitendra Chowdhury on Monday said his party is ready to join hands with secular political parties with the common intention to oust the BJP from power.
Chowdhury’s statement came as an official approval to the speculations doing rounds in the political circles about a political understanding between the Left and the Congress, once considered to be the arch-rivals in Tripura.
Addressing a press conference at CPI (M) state headquarters in Agartala, Chowdhury said, “Leader of the opposition Manik Sarkar paid a visit to violence-affected worker’s house and that time he had also visited the house of Congress workers whose house was also ransacked. Now if the BJP calls it a political understanding then our stand is clear, any secular democratic political force that raises its voice against the BJP can be our partner but based on issues, political programmes”.
Chowdhury said that his party has strong objections to the state government’s proposals to hike the electricity tariff as part of the new electricity amendment Bill.
He said, “We have submitted before the Commission as to why we have strong objections towards the proposal of this hike. The state government is now trying to put the burden of its failures on the shoulders of innocent consumers. If electricity becomes costlier it triggers a ripple effect by increasing production cost in agriculture as well in the industrial sectors”.
The CPI (M) state secretary said, “Claiming that services delivery will be fine-tuned, five electric divisions were handed over to private distributors in the state. Today, we asked the department to show us whether they have seen any success. The TSECL officials tried to dodge the question stating that revenue generation in those areas saw a dramatic rise. But in reality, there is no change”.
He also pointed out that despite having its own power generation capacity, the state is failing to reduce the per unit generation cost.
“We have enough man power in TSECL. We have Baramura, Rukhia and Dumboor hydroelectric plants. But, what we have seen in recent years, these plants are failing to produce power to the optimum level. If we can do it ourselves, our per unit generation cost slumps automatically. Instead of that, they are making excuses after excuses to revise the power tariff as per their whims”, alleged Chowdhury.
He said proposals have been placed to increase the existing power tariff by 10 percent.