Congress blames BJP, AAP for power woes

IANS/New DelhiThe Congress Party yesterday continued its power protest here, threatening to cut supply to the houses of former Delhi minister Manish Sisodia and Bharatiya Janata Party leaders if the crisis was not resolved soon.A day after Congress leaders were detained when they tried to obstruct train services at Nangloi railway station in west Delhi, the party’s senior leaders Ajay Maken, Shakeel Ahmed and Arvinder Singh Lovely protested in central Delhi’s Karol Bagh area.Lovely, who is the party’s Delhi unit chief, burnt effigies of former chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.Scores of party workers, joined by locals, shouted anti-BJP and anti-AAP slogans.“If the crisis is not resolved soon, we will cut the electricity supply to the houses of Manish Sisodia (AAP leader) and BJP leaders,” Delhi Congress spokesman Mukesh Sharma said.The national capital has been reeling under long hours of power cuts, following a May 30 storm, which damaged transmission lines.Maken blamed Kejriwal and Modi for the power crisis in the capital.“Arvind Kejriwal and Narendra Modi are responsible for this condition of Delhi. Arvind Kejriwal wanted to be seen on television, so he protested at Rajghat,” Maken said.“I want to ask (federal power minister) Piyush Goyal that last year approximately 5,800 MW electricity was supplied in Delhi, then why you are not able to fulfil the requirement of just 5,600 MW.” The Congress, out of power both at the national level and in Delhi, has held a string of protests over the outages. President Pranab Mukherjee’s daughter Sharmistha joined one such protest on Saturday.Many Congress workers led by Lovely, Sajjan Kumar and Sharma staged a demonstration in west Delhi’s Nangloi area on Saturday.Water cannons were used to disperse a mob of protesters who tried to break police barricades on National Highway 10.Meanwhile, Congress leader A K Walia warned that similar protests would continue in coming days.“We are not going to stop our protests till the time Delhiites get respite from the crisis. We will keep protesting in the coming days,” Walia said.