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Enron back as a poll issue

Mrityunjay Bose in Bombay

With the polls inching nearer, the Enron fast track power project has once again surfaced in Maharashtra as a hot election issue, leading to a war of attrition among the Congress, the newly-formed Nationalist Congress Party and the ruling Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance.

The Sena-BJP alliance had made former Maharashtra chief minister Sharad Pawar a target of criticism during the 1995 assembly elections over the Enron power project at Dhabhol in Ratnagiri distict. Now the issue has come full circle and the alliance finds itself guns at the receiving end.

The Sena-BJP which had talked the language of dumping the project into the Arabian Sea, revived it after coming to power.

Pawar, who was the architect of the project, then headed the Congress government in the state. The former Maharashtra chief minister and defence minister is now the founder of the NCP, which he floated after rebelling against Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.

The NCP, which now intends to rake up the issue targetting the alliance government in Maharashtra, said that the Enron agreement will be reconsidered if the NCP comes to power in the state.

This time around, the issue that has taken the centrestage of the controversy is the hiked power tariff rate allowed to Enron per unit. Though the Sena-BJP is defending itself on the power tariff issue, the Congress is up in arms against Pawar as well as Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde, who also holds the energy portfolio, accusing them of being responsible for putting the state electricity board into financial crisis and imposing financial burden on state government and the people of the state.

Leader of the opposition in the state Legislative Council and NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal said that Enron will figure as an election issue, be it the Lok Sabha elections or the state assembly polls. ''We want the people to know what the alliance government has done and it is going to tax the common public,'' he said. The power tariff may well go beyond Rs 5 per unit and the Maharashtra State Electricity Board will have to pay higher charges, he added.

The power tariff now stands at Rs 3.1 per unit. When negotiated, it was Rs 2.15 per unit, but later it stood at Rs 2.40 after renegotiation. But if it is feared that with the dollar-rupee fluctuation and use of LNG as the fuel the tariff may shoot upto Rs 5.50.

When it was pointed out to Bhujbal, the allegations made by Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee general secretary Rajiv Chavan that Pawar as well as the Sena-BJP was responsible for allowing Enron to come to Maharashtra, he said, ''We needed power and hence Pawar was interested in the project.''

But, he shifted the blame on the alliance government saying that for them only the tariff would be over Rs 5.

Munde, however, said that power tariff of Enron's Dhabhol power project will not be over Rs 5.50 and described it as a ''false propaganda''. He also denied that some of the state's thermal and hydel power plants have been shut down to enable the MSEB to make use of the power supplied by US-based multinational Enron.

The deputy chief minister, who has once launched a campaign against the Dhabhol project, located in the Konkan region, said that the government is interested in welfare of public and it will not have a burden on the people.

UNI

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