Agitating farmers illegally tapping electricity, damaging road: NHAI
The highway authority says farmers using stolen electricity to run their washing machines, heaters and TVs etc and urged the UP government to get the expressway vacated
LUCKNOW: The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has accused the agitating farmers of illegally tapping electricity from its streetlight connection to run their different gadgets, including washing machines, heaters and TVs, besides damaging the road at the Ghazipur border on the under-construction DelhiMeerut Expressway.
The NHAI has urged the Uttar Pradesh government to get the road vacated in keeping with the terms and conditions of the State Support Agreement (SSA), which provides that barring reasons related to emergency, national security and law and order, no government agency or private individual will disrupt the highway project.
The NHAI charges come amid announcement by Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait that he would set up an air-conditioned office at the protest site, giving indications about the agitators readying for a long haul.
Incidentally Tikait, who has been sitting on the UP-Delhi border with thousands of his supporters for more than two months now demanding rollback of the three controversial agriculture laws, is also a member of the State Advisory Committee (SAC) under the UP Electricity Regulatory Commission (UPERC).
NHAI claims to have written a number of letters to authorities since December 16, 2020 bringing the issue to their notice and urging them to get the site vacated so that the expressway project could be
completed as per fixed timeline.
“We have been regularly writing to the authorities for over two months now about the farmers having illegally occupied the expressway, stealing electricity from our street lights, damaging the road etc and urging them to get the place vacated, but in vain,” said project director Mudit Garg over phone.
The state government, he argued, must order vacation of the site as per the SSA entered into with it on May 5, 2015.
One of the letters written by Garg to district magistrate, Ghaziabad, with a copy marked to UP’s chief secretary and regional officer, NHAI on January 28, complained: “Farmers are making unauthorised use of the project’s streetlights for various purposes and things such as washing machines, heaters, tent lighting, mobile charging points etc.”
“Tapping supply illegally from the streetlight,” he pointed in the letter, led to frequent damages of equipment like miniature circuit breakers (MCBs) etc apart from causing fluctuations, damaging project’s highquality streetlight lamps.
The letter further said “bitumen layer on around 1 km stretch, from UP Gate/Delhi to Dasna, had been completely burnt leaving the road surface in a very poor condition because of farmers regularly burning bonfires on the dharna
site.”
“Besides, digging the road to erect poles to put up tents and water constantly flowing from the make-shift toilets set up on the site, are damaging the road,” the letter said.
Garg said entry to the site has been completely blocked. “We do not know what is happening there on the project site. Protestors chased our men away when they managed to reach the place a few days ago,” he complained.
Meanwhile, BKU state president Rajveer Singh Jadaun said: “We are not going to vacate the protest site, NHAI’s complaints notwithstanding, till the government withdraws the three laws.”
“As for the charges about farmers stealing electricity from NHAI’s streetlight connection, our leader Rakesh Tikait has publicly said that government can always send its officials and give a separate power connection for the dharna site,” he added.
UP Power Corporation Ltd (UPPCL) chief engineer, Ghaziabad zone, Pankaj Srivastav confirmed that farmers, or anyone else on their behalf, had neither taken a power connection for the protest site nor had anyone applied for one.
“We are told that farmers are meeting their electricity requirements by tapping the streetlights line that is duly metered and that way causes no revenue loss to us,” he argued.