Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressing her displeasure over the Centre’s move to table the Electricity (Amendment) Bill in Parliament, describing it as anti-people and the result of a unilateral decision.

Mamata in her letter expressed her reservations against “the sweeping abdication of the State’s pre-eminent role in the power sector in favour of unregulated and de-licensed private players”.

“I write this letter to re-lodge my protest against the Union Government’s fresh move to place the much criticised Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2000 in the Parliament. It was proposed to be moved last year, but many of us had underlined the anti-people aspects… and at least I had detailed out all the salient pitfalls of the Bill in a letter to you on 12 June, 2020,” she wrote.

She added that when the bill was not moved last year, she thought the Centre would consult all stakeholders, but now she was “stunned” to hear that the bill was coming back without any dialogue and “some graver anti-people features this time”.

“Such a laissez faire approach would result in concentration of private profit-focussed utility players in the lucrative urban-industrial segments, while poor and rural consumers would be left to be tended by public sector DISCOMs,” she wrote.

The chief minister wrote that the bill would leave state PSUs sick and ailing and yet forced to serve areas where no corporate entity would focus.

“Allowing cherrypicking to select private entities cannot be the goal of public policies, particularly in a strategic sector like power,” she wrote.

Mamata added that the reduction of the role of state PSUs, the unchecked enhancement of private players and curtailment of the authority of the states in this particular sector imply a sinister design.

“The dilution of the role of the State Electricity Regulatory Commission and the state distribution companies implies a political design to demolish state bodies and domestic industries. Direct interference by the Central government in activities involving distribution will not at all be helpful to take care of the interest of the common people and the states,” she added.

This is not the first time Mamata has written to Modi to oppose the bill. Last year she had taken up the issue with Modi over the draft bill, and to mobilise the Opposition had also written to chief ministers of non-BJP states.

Even then she had argued that the draft Bill was a violation of the “spirit of co-operative federalism”.