In an embarrassing incident, Uttar Pradesh Energy Minister Arvind Kumar Sharma had to carry out an inspection using a phone flashlight during a visit to a power sub-station in Barabanki district.
Mr. Sharma had been on a surprise visit to the sub-station when the power went off in the middle of his inspection. Mr. Sharma had to use a phone flashlight to check the registers and call the consumers who had recorded their complaints. The Minister was on a surprise visit of the Badel electricity substation where he asked the SDO and the JE present about the number of complaints from the consumers received for the day and those resolved.
The main Opposition party in the State Assembly, the Samajwadi Party (SP) took a jibe at the government at the power failure during Mr. Sharma’s visit and made taunts, calling it the ‘Gujarat model’. “Gujarat model minister turns off lights in Uttar Pradesh. During the regime of SP government there was uninterrupted power supply in cities, towns and villages, while during the BJP rule, even the state's energy minister was craving for electricity, the power failure in the meeting of the Energy Minister, shameful,” reads a tweet posted by the SP on its official handle.
Recently, while inaugurating 12 power substations and transmission centres on the occasion of the Electricity Festival and Energy Day, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had said that the State had made a big leap in power production and supply with 1.21 lakh villages, which had remained without electricity since Independence, becoming electrified in the last five years while 1.43 crore free electricity connections had also been given to the needy people in the State of Uttar Pradesh under Saubhagya Yojana.
