Problems for Madhya Pradesh CM Kamal Nath are spiraling and seem to be poised to trouble the CM in times to come. After multiple raids on close aides of Kamal Nath, where income tax department had recovered crores of rupees, another issue for Kamal Nath to worry, the state has been going back Digvijaya Singh era where multiple hours of power cuts were a norm. The worst affected are the rural regions, where people have also been struggling to fight with rising summer temperatures. With the beginning of the exam season, students in rural Madhya Pradesh are also been suffering. According to ground reports, around one to ten hours of unannounced power cuts are rampant in the state.
However, instead of solving the problem or even addressing it, the Kamal Nath government has turned to shift the blame. It has not only blamed the BJP for the power cuts and had charged a journalist with sedition for writing about the power cuts. Now it has found a new villain to put the blame on, bats. Kamal Nath government has blamed bats for the power cuts in Madhya Pradesh.
According to MP Energy Minister Priyavrat Singh, the frequent power cuts in the state are caused by bats. He said that the officers told him that the bats in old Bhopal live in large numbers, and that triggers fault in electricity lines.
Reacting to this, Shivraj Singh Chouhan stated, “”First they say Shivraj government bought faulty transformer and now they are saying it’s bats. They have lost their mental balance,” according to the India Today report.
Earlier, the Kamal Nath government had blamed Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s government for the power cuts and had said that faulty transformers bought during the Shivraj administration were causing the crisis.
Kamal Nath has been under a lot of pressure for underperforming compared to the previous Shivraj Singh government. The Congress made a promise of waiving farmer loans while going into the assembly elections in 2018 in multiple states; however, implementation inefficiencies have clouded the scheme with an image of a populist election stunt. So was the case with Shivnarayan, a farmer from a village in Agar Malwa, 190 km from Bhopal who was stunned to see Rs 13 mentioned against his name. Shivnarayan said, “The state government had promised to waive loans up to Rs. 2 lakh. Forms were filled and I was expecting a complete waiver of my loan amount of Rs. 20,000. But the list that has come to the panchayat says only Rs. 13 has been waived,” Hameed Khan, a farmer from Khargone i.e. Kamal Nath’s constituency, said he took a loan of Rs.10,000, but the loan waiver against his name was of Rs. 232 only. Cases of even nonexistent individuals receiving loan waiver have also surfaced.
Now, with the government blaming bats for the power cuts, it seems Kamal Nath government has completely lost the plot.