Date:10/05/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/05/10/stories/2008051060401200.htm

National

Governor must have sought Power Minister’s views: Basu

Special Correspondent

“What he is doing amounts to opposing State government”
Power situation is more or less comfortable: Buddhadeb

Kolkata: Veteran Marxist leader Jyoti Basu said here on Friday that Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi was being “childish” in observing a two-hour voluntary power cut at the Raj Bhavan in view of the power situation in the city.

The Raj Bhavan has been observing voluntary power cuts since Wednesday as the Governor believes that it should not be exception to the city’s electricity supply situation.

The Governor’s action was not becoming of the dignity of this office and he should have sought the views of the State’s Power Minister on the matter, Mr. Basu said.

“What he is doing amounts to opposing the government.”

“I do not wish to comment on the Governor’s move,” Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said.

“But I would like to reiterate that the power situation in the State is more or less comfortable” and the problems that were being faced at times was because of mechanical failures in some power plants. “The [power] situation is not so bad,” he added.

Commission

Asked by newspersons to comment on the Governor’s role in the State in the context of questions being raised on the power situation, he said a commission had been set up by the Centre to go into details of Centre-State relationships. “Our party will submit its recommendations to the commission,” he added.

Mr. Bhattacharjee pointed out that 86 per cent of the mouzas in the State had been brought within the ambit of the rural electrification scheme and electricity was being provided to over 60 per cent of the villages.