Ghaziabad, Aug 18 (PTI) Employees and engineers of electricity departments of Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday staged a one-hour protest at the district headquarters here against the proposed Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2020.

Around 15 lakh employees and engineers staged a protest between 4 pm to 5pm against the proposed amendment bill and privatization of power sector in Uttar Pradesh, convener of the Vidhyut Karamchari Sanyukt Sangharsh Samiti Avdhesh Kumar told PTI.

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Addressing the protesters outside the chief engineer's office here, Kumar said the employees and engineers of the department are enraged by the proposal of privatisation of Poorvanchal Vidhyut Vitran Nigam.

Prior to this privatisation of the power sector had faced failure in greater Noida and Agra. Besides, privatisation of power sector remained unsuccessful in Orissa, Delhi, Aurangabad, Nagpur, Jalgaon, Ujjain, Gwalior, Bhagalpur, Gaya and Muzaffarpur including other places of the country, Kumar said.

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The proposed amendment bill is against the masses and would lead to inflated electricity bills if passed. Only business houses will benefit in case the bill is passed in parliament, Kumar said.

In case the government tries to pass the bill, employees would carry out a mass movement, Kumar said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)