Keshubhai’s son sniffs plot in power board crackdowns

Leader of Opposition Amarsinh Chaudhary too alleged that the GEB raids at Archer Metal ‘‘smacks of political vendetta’’. The GEB sleuths would not have done this without Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s knowledge, he charged.

Minister of State for Energy Saurabhbhai Patel gave a clean chit to Bharat and slammed Chaudhary for dragging the former Chief Minister’s name into the issue.

The minister said Bharat Patel neither owned nor was a partner in Archer Metals. ‘‘Chaudhary is trying to derive political advantage by dragging his name in the anti-power theft campaign,’’ he said.

‘‘He is mistaken if he wants to cause a split in the BJP by making such statements because the BJP as a party follows an ideology,’’ Saurabhbhai Patel said.

When contacted on Saturday, Bharat Patel told The Indian Express over the phone from Rajkot that the recent GEB raids on the factory located at Shapar industrial estate near Rajkot appears to have been ordered from the higher ups ‘‘just because I happen to be the son of a former Chief Minister’’.

Bharat said though he had pulled out of the unit over a year back, and handed over its management to his partners, ‘‘it’s my moral responsibility to speak on behalf of the new management, for the loan I had taken to set up the factory is yet to be repaid to financial institutions like GIIC and GSFC’’.

Dubbing the raid as ‘‘politically motivated’’, the former CM’s son said the GEB team swooped on the factory, checked the 750 KV capacity CT-PT (current transformer and potential transformer) meter and replaced it with a new one, suspecting power theft at the unit. But the GEB’s vigilance cell had recently issued an ‘‘all well’’ report to the management of the unit.

‘‘Before I handed over the unit to my partners, I had paid over Rs 1.68 crore to the GEB towards power bills in the past three years. There is no question of us resorting to unlawful means to run the factory. The GEB sleuths should have checked our past records before raiding the unit. Let the truth speak for itself when the meter is tested in the GEB laboratory,’’ he said.

Bharat said the unit was forced to suspend its operations for over two months in the wake of the post-Godhra riots, and had suffered damages of about Rs 19 lakh in the 2001 earthquake. The government is yet to compensate the damages caused by the quake. And the GEB raid has added to the unit’s woes, Bharat added.