Electricity Minister Natham R Viswanathan today said Union Minister Piyush Goyal's remark that he could not reach out to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa is false and part of "cheap politics". (File photo)
Reiterating his Cabinet colleague O Panneerselvam's claim, Electricity Minister Natham R Viswanathan today said Union Minister Piyush Goyal's remark that he could not reach out to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa is false and part of "cheap politics".
Referring to Mr Goyal's view that projects could be implemented only in case of a regime change, Mr Viswanathan said, "It was a false accusation made for political reasons. It was cheap politics keeping in mind the coming Assembly election."
He referred to Mr Goyal's appreciation of Ms Jayalalithaa in the Lok Sabha last year-- "Amma had given a thrust to renewable energy in Tamil Nadu."
Targeting Ms Jayalalithaa days ago, Mr Goyal had said, "It (TN) is a state within a state. It is part of the country where I can't even reach out to the Chief Minister. I have made several attempts to talk to their leaders without success", adding that Tamil Nadu had not signed a pact for a power reforms initiative of the Centre 'Uday' ("Ujjwal Discom Assurance Yojana").
Citing this, Mr Viswanathan said, "Calling Uday, a reforms initiative is an act of deceiving the people, the proposed move will hit them hard."
He alleged that the project has been brought by the Centre due to pressure from Foreign Financial Institutions and Credit rating agencies.
He said if the Centre was genuinely interested in welfare of states' it should have lowered the coal price for state power utilities. However, it increased the coal clean energy cess to Rs 400 a tonne from Rs 51.50, he said.
"Uday is not an initiative which will be beneficial to Tamil Nadu and its people," he said adding "the true beneficiaries will be private power companies and the banks that had given them loans."
"Since power tariff needs to be restructured every three months (under Uday), the people will be put to lot of pain," he claimed.
The Centre has said 'Uday' seeks to ensure a sustainable solution to enable the power distribution utilities in states to come out of long standing debts, which is almost Rs 4.3 lakh crore. Among other things, it envisages takeover of debt of state utilities' by the respective state governments.
After DMK president M Karunanidhi sought an explanation from Ms Jayalalithaa to the Union minister's claim yesterday, Finance Minister O Paneerselvam said, "there was no iota of truth" in the allegations of Mr Goyal and that it was done for "political mileage."