Farmers’ suffering is being exacerbated by the AAP government’s massive power outages: Badal

Sukhbir Singh Badal, head of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), said on Thursday that power outages in Punjab pose a danger to the standing paddy and vegetable crops of flood-affected farmers.
According to the head of the SAD, “farmers in the districts of Muktsar, Fazilka, and Ferozepur are reporting eighteen to twenty hour power cuts, which is causing the withering of their paddy and vegetable crops in addition to severely affecting their horticulture trees.” He said that efforts to forcefully shut down more than 700 lift irrigation pumps in the areas had made the situation worse.

According to Badal, farmers must use lift pumps every week or risk having lawsuits filed against them. According to a police order, “farmers who have been assigned canal water shares are prohibited from operating lift pumps at all times,” he said.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) administration, which during the recent floods flooded its own villages in Ferozepur by releasing water from the Harike headworks into state villages rather than the Rajasthan canal, according to the SAD leader, was concurrently boosting canal water flow to Rajasthan.

According to Badal, “the forced shutdown of lift irrigation pumps of farmers in Punjab is also intended to artificially inflate the availability of canal water so that Rajasthan’s share can be increased further to derive political benefits for AAP in that state’s elections.”

According to him, such practices had caused the water at the ends of canals to dry up, which had made the state’s farmers’ plight even worse.

According to the SAD president, widespread power outages affect both the industrial sector and urban regions. He said that as a result, business owners, particularly those in the industry sector, were suffering, including dealers and industrialists.

“People are being forced to switch back to generators,” Badal added, adding that this would negatively affect the state’s economy.

Farmers were also grumbling about regular power outages, according to the Akali chief. This is because the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) lacks the funding necessary to perform basic maintenance tasks. Farmers are compelled to fix their transformers themselves, he said.

Badal said that a brief dry period had revealed the AAP government’s plans. Were there not enough rain in June and July, he continued, “one shudders to think what would have happened.”