Guntur violence spontaneous, says Cong. leader

By Our Staff Reporter

KURNOOL, JULY 8. The official spokesman of the Congress and former Industries Minister, Mr. Rambhupal Choudary, said the riots following the blast in a mosque in Guntur were spontaneous and termed attributing of the disturbances to any political party illogical.

Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, he said neither the TDP leadership nor the Congress leaders might have encouraged the youth to go on the rampage, but the those who were moved by the vandalising of the religious place should have reacted spontaneously.

Mr. Choudary urged the Government to provide agriculture connections on demand since farm connections were mainly responsible for pilferage of power. Fed up with the delay in giving the connections by the AP Transco, farmers charged the pumpsets on their own, but they could not be considered pilferers. Thousands of farmers had been waiting for the connections for the past few years, he said and added that the Government should mobilise materials like poles, conductor and meters in a big way to meet the demand.

Referring the statement by the Minister for Energy that over 20 lakh illegal connections were detected during the week-long drive, he expressed doubts over providing meters to all with in a time frame. He repeated his demand for quantification of the benefit from the regularisation so that the benefits to the extent could be passed on to the consumers by reducing the tariff. He said the drive could have been appropriate had the Government provided infrastructure first and launched the drive later. The tariff revision should have been done after the exercise.

Mr. Choudary asked the Government to give one more chance to power consumers to get the illegal connections regularised since the previous drive was wrought with confusion with the agitation on the one hand and official meetings on the other. Mr. Choudary suggested to the Government that each of 1,600 sub-stations be recognised as basic units and be placed under the charge of an independent officer so that he would be responsible for drawing and supplying of power. The Town Congress Committee president, Mr. S. Maddileti Reddy, the Legal Cell Convenor, Mr. G. Nagdranath Yadav, Corporator, Mr. B.L.Prasad and others were present at the press meet.

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