South Delhi reeled under massive power cuts on Saturday with some areas facing outages for around five hours following which Delhi Government pulled up the BSES discoms asking them to take remedial measures.
Areas like Okhla, Lodhi Colony, Bhogal, Nizamuddin, Jangpura Extension, Masjid Moth, Malviya Nagaar, Kalkaji and parts of Lajpat Nagar and South Extension, faced power cuts in the range of 2 to 5 hours making life difficult for the residents in the blistering heat.
Officials from Power Distribution Company BSES blamed Delhi Transco Ltd, Delhi Government run entity that maintains the transmission network in the city, for the long outages saying technical problem in the network caused the power cuts.
"There was no power in my area for five hours. We have made complaints to the concerned authorities but there was no response," said a resident of Okhla.
Delhi Transco officials said, there was a technical glitch in its distribution network supplying power to South Delhi but at the same time added that BSES could have used the alternate network if it had made such arrangements.
Officials from Delhi Government's Power department said the discoms have not been investing in improving its infrastructure due to which power cuts are taking place across the city when the load on the network goes up due to higher consumption of electricity.
Several areas in West and East Delhi too faced long power cuts.
There were very little outages in North Delhi where power is supplied by Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited (TPDL).
Power Minister Satyender Jain took strong note of the long power cuts and directed the discoms to take urgent measures to ensure round the clock power supply.
Satyender Jain said there is no shortage of power in the national capital and expressed hope that the situation will improve in coming days.
"There is no shortage of power in Delhi. There are certain local faults and we are receiving complaints which are being closely monitored.
"It seems these companies did not to do routine maintenance and did not invest to the extent it was needed. We have asked them to form quick response teams. We have given policy direction to DERC under sec 108 to penalise these companies on power cuts and the notification will be out soon," Jain told reporters.
Jain said, "it seems they have not invested adequately otherwise what explains these local faults? There's no shortage of power so these companies will have to correct these local faults. They will be strictly acted against.
"Things should improve in the next one to two days. Outage in the city stands at O.19 per cent which is unacceptable. The onus of preventive maintenance lies on them."
(PTI)
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