President Pranab Mukherjee's daughter joins protest against outages in Delhi

Sharmistha Mukherjee, daughter of President Pranab Mukherjee, today participated in a candlelight march organised by Congress party in East Delhi to protest prolonged power cuts and water crisis. Delhi Congress Chief Arvinder Singh Lovely, senior leader Mukesh Sharma and scores of party workers took part in the march in Gandhi Nagar area.

Asked about her participation in the event, Sharmistha said she has been an active member of the party and would like to participate in similar events. "I've been in Delhi since my childhood. I'm an active member of Congress, I've a primary membership of the party," she said.

Criticising Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal's comment that lack of policy initiative by previous Congress government in Delhi was responsible for the situation, she said if that was the case then why there was no long outages in the last 15 years. "I am from Bengal. At one point of time, Kolkata was called the load-shedding city of the country. But now, Delhi will be called the load-shedding city.
"We have been hearing that good days will come. You tell me have the good days come"? she said.

Asking the BJP-led government to address the water and power crises, she also took a dig at AAP saying its government did nothing to ensure power supply during peak summer months. "They could have done proper planning. There was a need for proper planning," she said adding the problem should be addressed immediately as Delhi was facing power cuts upto 10-12 hours.

Lovely said Congress was forced to take the path of agitation as the current dispensation at the Centre was not interested in addressing the problem. He said as Delhi was under central rule, it was the responsibility of the Centre to address the problem of power and water. "I just want to say that Congress is not fond of protests and agitations. Congress has always believed in positive governance. But today, we are forced to go on a 'dharna'. We waited so many days for this 'deaf-dumb' government which had promised 'acche din' to this nation, to react," he said.

The city has been facing long power cuts as the power transmission network has been severely damaged in a storm that had struck the city on May 30.

DPCC Chief Spokesperson Mukesh Sharma too attacked the Centre accusing it of being "insensitive" towards the problems of Delhiites.