DW BUREAU / CHANDIGARH The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Punjab went all gun blazing against the Badal family over the issue of the proposed Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2020 brought in by the Union Government, dubbing the same as disastrous for the states, farmers and the poor. In a statement issued from headquarters in Chandigarh on Thursday, senior party leader and Sunam MLA Aman Arora alleged that the Badal family was misleading the people of Punjab by adopting double standards on the core issue concerning a vast majority of people across the country. Reacting sharply to the letter, purported to have been written by SAD (Badal) President and MP Sukhbir Singh Badal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi not to pursue the proposed Bill, Aman Arora stated that the power Bill would prove to be deadly for all power consumers across the state, especially farmers and the poor, dalits, and other vulnerable sections of the society, claiming that the same impinged on the rights of the states given to them under the federal system. He hit out at Sukhbir Badal for maintaining a stoic silence over the fact that when the Union Cabinet was deliberating on the deadly Bill in the Parliament, he and his wife and Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal had signed the draft Bill without going into its disastrous ramifications. Wasn't the Bill fatal at that point in time? Arora questioned. The AAP leader said that if the Badal family had really been the sympathisers of Punjab and its people, Harsimrat Kaur Badal would have put up her stiff resistant and stopped it from getting a nod by the Union Cabinet, saying Sukhbir Singh Badal had not perorced to write letters to Modi seeking review on the decision. Aman Arora said that, instead of making a fuss over the matter by misleading people, the Badals should make it clear to the people of Punjab whether they would oppose the proposed Bill inside and outside Parliament and in case the same got the final nod after leapfrogging all hurdles, would they sever ties with their alliance partners at the centre by sacrificing Harsimrat Kaur Badal's ministerial berth? Arora further added that with the implementation of the power proposed (Amendment) Bill, the states would be divested of powers to allow electricity subsidy and cross subsidy to the farmers, dalits and others, thus ending up in higher tariff for all sections across the state. He added that the private companies would have the monopoly in the power sector with the State Electricity Regulatory Authority going into the hands of the Center, which would a tantamount to demolishing the federal structure of the state. (editor@dailyworld.in)