Mumbai: Prime Minister Narendra Modi should show "leadership" to resolve the power crisis in the country or else shoulder complete responsibility for any breakdown, Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan said on Sunday.
Chavan was talking to reporters after releasing the campaign booklets for the upcoming Maharashtra Assembly elections. The booklets focus on 15 years of Congress-NCP rule and failures of 100 day-old Narendra Modi-led BJP government. Chavan rejected Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal's charge, made in Delhi earlier on Sunday, that he (Chavan) was "politicising" the power situation and levelling "baseless allegations" against the central government.
Talking to reporters here, Chavan said that he had not levelled any allegations. "It is not a fight between the Maharashtra Congress and the Gujarat BJP. It's a national crisis caused due to certain orders by the highest court and decisions of power firms to provide electricity after Indonesia changed some of its laws. It is not my job to negotiate with Indonesia," he said.
Chavan said that the issue was not resolved though he had met Goyal to discuss the crisis. "If the central government can't resolve the issue, it should shoulder complete responsibility," Chavan said. Chavan said there has been no response, though he had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to convene a meeting of chief ministers, to resolve the crisis.
"In Gujarat, there was loadshedding of 3,500 MW last week," he said. To a question on why the Congress was targeting Narendra Modi instead of focussing on its development work, Chavan replied, "In the BJP there is only one leader now. So we can only speak about Modi," he said.
Replying to a question about the status of Congress-NCP Assembly seat sharing talks, Chavan said discussions are on. "Both parties have begun their candidate selection process. Our Central Election Committee met in Delhi and some decisions have been taken," he said.
"We want to have an alliance with the NCP. We have initiated the process of finalising candidates for 174 seats which we contested in 2009. Discussions also took place about the remaining 114 seats from where the NCP fielded candidates during the last election. The alliance will happen keeping in mind our interests as well the NCP's interests in mind," he said.
Chavan also rejected BJP president Amit Shah's charge that the Maharashtra government is involved in scams worth thousands of crores of rupees. "It's ridiculous. Our annual budget has been around Rs 45,000 crore every year and to complete several development works, we got funds from the UPA government. Did BJP get the funds from Nagpur," Chavan asked, hinting at the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's (RSS) Nagpur headquarters.
In a related development, Maharashtra Congress Assembly election campaign committee chief Narayan Rane who was also present at the press conference, rubbished Shiv Sena's "vision document" for the state. "Uddhav has no vision for the state. Whatever he is publicising will give us ideas to implement when we come back to power," Rane said.
He said that the booklets released by Chavan today would be distributed among party cadre, to expose the Modi government and highlight achievements of the UPA and 15 years of the Maharashtra state government headed by the Congress.
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