The two-day Haryana power strike over a parallel electricity distribution licence for Gurgaon and Nuh has triggered a demand for a government white paper on the financial and public-service losses caused by the disruption. Indian National Lok Dal president Abhay Singh Chautala said the state government must disclose the scale of the damage and explain how the crisis was allowed to continue.
The strike followed the Haryana Electricity Regulatory Commission’s decision to grant a parallel distribution licence to Eleven Power Private Limited for the two districts. According to Chautala, the disruption affected electricity and water supplies to households and farmers and caused losses running into thousands of crores. The Times of India report did not provide an independent estimate of the losses.
Chautala also alleged that electricity employees were jailed during the strike and that non-technical government staff, including patwaris and teachers, were deployed to manage power supply. He said this exposed employees without technical training to operational risks. These claims were made by the INLD leader and were not independently verified in the supplied report.
The dispute centres on the regulatory decision to permit a second electricity distribution company in Gurgaon and Nuh. Chautala questioned the Haryana government’s stated position against privatisation and asked why it did not immediately invoke Section 108 of the Electricity Act to seek reversal of the commission’s decision. The report did not include a response from the Haryana government, HERC or Eleven Power to these objections.
Chautala demanded clarity on who authorised the licence and said Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini should resign if the decision had been taken without his approval. He further alleged that Union minister Manohar Lal Khattar had facilitated the licence and claimed the company was linked to a person close to him. The report explicitly noted that these allegations could not be independently verified.
The INLD leader said the party’s national patron, Prof Sampat Singh, had appeared during proceedings on the company’s application and raised what he described as fact-backed objections. Despite those objections, Chautala said, the licence was granted. The supplied report does not detail the commission’s reasoning, the licence conditions, the proposed service area or the implementation schedule for the new distributor.
The political dispute has also widened to include the Congress. Chautala accused the principal opposition party of failing to challenge the decision and claimed that its functionaries did not appear before HERC to register their protest. He alleged that both the BJP and Congress were responsible for the damage caused by the strike, but the report did not provide responses from either party.
The immediate administrative questions are the government’s assessment of the strike-related losses, the status of the parallel licence and the regulatory and legal steps available to the state. The INLD has demanded a white paper, while the supplied report contains no indication of whether the Haryana government has accepted that demand or announced a formal review.
