Chandigarh: AAP boycotts mayor’s ‘hollow’ Swachh Survekshan tea, slams 12% power tariff hike
Party says celebrations mock city’s woes, calls privatisation a blunder
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Representatives during meeting of Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission at Government Museum and Art Gallery Auditorium in Sector 10 of Chandigarh on Friday (Express/Kamleshwar Singh)The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Friday hit out at the city administration on two fronts: boycotting a mayor-hosted tea gathering to celebrate Chandigarh’s second place in the national Swachh Survekshan (cleanliness survey) rankings, and lodging strong objections to the 12 per cent power tariff hike approved by the Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission (JERC).
The AAP said the BJP mayoral candidate was wrongfully claiming credit for the Swachh Survekshan rankings, achieved under former AAP mayor Kuldeep Kumar, and that the celebrations are being done “amid broken roads, waterlogging, unsafe drinking water, and toxic leachate from Dadumajra entering residential areas is an insult to public pain”.
“We stand with citizens struggling with roads, water and toxic waste, not with those holding hollow celebrations,” the party said in a statement issued by state media incharge Vikrant A Tanwar.
Separately, AAP leaders led by the party’s city president Vijaypal Singh protested the JERC-approved 12 per cent power tariff hike during a public hearing in Sector 10, submitting a memorandum to the commission’s chairperson. They called the hike “a direct assault on public interest” and said privatisation of the profitable electricity department had turned into “a blunder.”
The AAP pointed out that the erstwhile government-run department posted Rs 258.85-crore profit in 2020–2021, but its private operator, Chandigarh Power Distribution Ltd (CPDL), has now projected Rs 158.0-crore revenue gap for 2025–26 and losses of Rs 982 crore over the next five years, all without an independent audit.
The party also alleged a decline in service quality since privatisation, citing more outages, inflated bills, arbitrary disconnections and poor grievance redressal. “People are paying more for worse services — this is robbery, not reform,” Singh said, demanding an immediate rollback of the hike, an independent audit of CPDL, a public performance review, and at least 200 free units for domestic users.
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