JAIPUR: Rajasthan High Court issued notice to the chief secretary, principal secretary of energy department, chairman of discom, managing directors of AVVNL and JVVNL over illegal disconnection of power supply to the public sector undertaking
Sambhar Salts Ltd, a subsidiary of the Hindustan Salts Ltd.
The single bench of Justice
Indrajeet Singh issued the notices were returnable by March 22. Tanveer Ahmed, counsel for the petitioner, said that the state government had allotted land of about 57,600 acres to
Hindustan Salts Limited at Sambhar Lake on lease for 99 years for salt manufacturing and allowed activities through an award called "V T Krishamachari Award" dated April 29, 1961.
The Lake area, which is allotted for production and manufacturing of salt to
Sambhar Salts Limited, is spread over three districts of Jaipur, Nagaur and Ajmer. There are about thousands of illegal borewells and majority of the borewells are located in the periphery of Sambhar Lake over the years. Thus the local people are indulged in siphoning the water from Sambhar Lake by using illegal power connections in connivance with the officials of discoms.
The National Green Tribunal, Central Zonal Bench, Bhopal in which on September 5 last year, passed an order for removing illegal connections and the chief secretary and the chairman of the discoms were directed to appear before the tribunal if illegal connections were not removed. But the respondent in instead of acting against the illegal connections disconnected the power supply to the company causing a loss of Rs 200 crore to the company so far.
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