Powercom employees stage massive protest at Ropar against land sale, EA bill 2025
Bahadurjeet Singh/ royalpatiala.in News/ Rupnagar/ January 29,2026
Punjab engineers employees pensioners today held a massive dharna at Ropar thermal plant against the sale of Powercom’s land/properties, scrapping of the Electricity Amendment Bill 2025 and the demand to set up two super critical 800 MW units at thermal plant Ropar under the state sector.
Ajaypal Singh Atwal, General Secretary of the PSEB engineers Association and various trade union leaders and Joint Action Committee leaders said that the Punjab government is planning to sell the valuable lands/assets of Powercom located in different cities of the state by bringing them under a special government scheme , which was a very wrong decision. Whereas, Powercom lands were often purchased or acquired under the Land Acquisition Act 1894 and therefore must be used for the development of the Power Sector.
It is pertinent to mention here that the ongoing Rs. 159 crore Zero Mission Outage project in Ludhiana city is facing various hurdles due to lack of adequate space to install Substation and equipment to erect new feeder lines to evacuate power.
All efforts are being made to mobilize the massive participation of employees and engineers deployed at the thermal and hydel projects in the forthcoming state level Dharna, being held on February 4.
The Joint Action Committee leadership further said that it has been informed by the Union Power Minister that the country's power distribution companies have collectively reported a profit after tax deduction to the tune of Rs.2701 Crores. Further, line losses have come down from 22.62% during 2014 to 15.04% during 2024-2025. Despite that the Central
Government is contemplating the anti-people Electricity Amendment Bill 2025 in the forthcoming Budget Session 2026 in a very chaotic manner, just to facilitate the corporates to take over of the power distribution sector. This will not only privatize the power distribution sector but also limit the role of state governments. Cross-subsidy will be done away and the state government will have to deposit the cost of power subsidy given to poor, low-income and farmers on an upfront basis.
