CHANDIGARH: All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) fully supports the struggle of farmers and urges the central government to scrap the farming laws recently passed in parliament and protect the power subsidy of farmers by withdrawing
the Electricity Amendment Bill 2020, and standard bidding document, said VK Gupta spokesperson of the federation.
The struggle of farmers is against the economic policy of the central government
which is to favour the corporates and industry leaders to maximize their
trading business and profit at the cost of the farming community.
Shailender Dubey Chairman AIPEF said that the
Power Engineers of the country had strongly opposed the proposal of the government
to eliminate subsidy in electricity tariff and in particular the proposal
to finish the present electricity subsidy being given to farmers was strongly opposed.
While the central government has proposed the procedure of DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer), this amounts to snatching the subsidy of free power to farmers. The proposal of DBT would
lead to huge economic hardship to the farmers who would have to pay the electricity
bills of their tubewells to the discoms while there was no guarantee of matching
DBT payments by the state government. The Electricity Amendment Bill 2020 must be withdrawn.
The present move of the government to introduce and implement the farmers'
laws are a part of the overall strategy of the present central govt. to introduce privatization at every step which amounts to practically selling the country bit by bit.
V K Gupta further said that the move to implement the farming laws in the name of economic reforms, will actually give huge trading benefits to the corporates and economically destroy the farmers who will be deprived of due revenue from marketing of the food grains etc.
The policy of the NDA government to benefit corporates will not only destroy agricultural activity it would also compromise the food security of the nation.