Rest House Politics — Part 2
PSEB’s privileged clientele extends beyond CM
Jangveer Singh
Tribune News Service

Sangrur/Bathinda, November 25
The Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB) has not built rest houses for the convenience of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal alone. A former Administrative Member (AM) as well as a Power Minister have also succeeded in getting their own rest houses.

Bizarre as it may sound, the PSEB built rest houses at Dirba and Bhagta Bhai Ke, the Assembly constituencies of its former AM Baldev Singh Mann and Power Minister Sikandar Singh Malooka.

Though PSEB Chairman HS Brar maintains that both rest houses were created on need basis only, this view is not held by any other engineer in the board with all of them feeling political considerations alone were behind their construction. This can be gauged from the fact that the rest house at Dirba has now been converted into an office.

“There was no need for any rest house in this area,” says an employee working at the office. According to the employee, the building, built in October 2001, was used as a meeting place in Mann’s constituency during his stint as the AM. “Later, as it was lying idle, it was decided to shift the local office here,” he added.

The PSEB turned out lucky at Dirba, but it has had no such luck at Bhagta Bhai Ke, which was built in 2000. The rest house there is lying idle since years with Malooka’s political career on the wane. The PSEB claims in information given under the RTI to Bathinda activist Charanjit Bhullar that the rest house was used to hold meetings and sangat darshan programmes when Malooka was a Cabinet minister.

The board maintains there is no record of the same or of any persons having stayed at the rest house, as an allocation register was not maintained. A new register has been started since February 2008.

A visit to the rest house revealed that the rest house is not being used at all. At most, the executive engineer takes a nap in it in the afternoon. The board on its part has spent Rs 7.24 lakh on the maintenance, including Rs 6.41 lakh on renovation, Rs 56,000 on repair of its annexe and Rs 27,000 to anti-termite treatment, from 2001 to 2007.

A perusal of the occupancy record of other PSEB rest houses reveals how different they are from the “VIP” rest houses. For instance, at the board’s Delhi rest house, as many as 7,345 persons have stayed between April 1997 and March 2008. In case of the Lehra Mohabbat rest house, 4,489 persons have stayed from April 2001 to March 2008.

Meanwhile, Congress leader Sukhpal Singh Khaira in a statement here today claimed the PSEB had “failed” miserably to provide power to the people, but was squandering money at the whims and fancy of the Chief Minister.

Khaira demanded a thorough probe into the entire matter by a committee of the Vidhan Sabha. He said the panel could examine whether the rest house was actually required for the utilisation of the debt-ridden PSEB.