Power outage in Old City areas, water supply hit

Residents had to brave the heat without power in Old City areas on Thursday as the Balaghat substation remained in shutdown mode for over six hours to undertake maintenance work.

The substation feeder is important as it supplies Balaganj water works – from where water is pumped to the Aishbagh reservoir, which gives water supply 50% of Old City areas.

Residents said water supply was affected by power shutdown due to panel replacement work at the 33 kv substation from 9 am to 5.30 pm.

Water supply in Ram Nagar, Sarfarazganj, Malapuram, Rastogi Nagar, Hardoi road, Yaseenganj, Amberganj, Rakabganj, Rajjabganj, Topkhana, Gaushala, Gernail ganj, Jal Nigam road remained affected for over five hours.

However, Jal Sansthan and LESA authorities claimed that water supply was not hit because alternative arrangements were in place. Meanwhile, an electricity pole came down crashing in Fazil Nagar area of Saadatganj around 3 pm on Thursday, but no one was injured. No LESA staff reached the spot for over three hours and the entire area battled power outage during that period.

The residents then contacted higher officials for replacement of the pole. The sub-station staff reached the spot to fix the problem after LESA GM directed the SDO to restore power supply at the earliest. However, the work to fix the pole was on till last reports came in.

Ashiana , LDA colony Kanpur road and Sindhu Nagar also had power woes. The supply was snapped due to a small local fault but the substation staff didn’t reach despite several complaints by residents.

A shutdown had been planned in Bhilawan, Sujanpura and Sardari Khera from 12.30 am to 2.30 am on Thursday/Friday intervening night. Work in these areas can only be done at this time because of ongoing work of LMRC during the day time, said SK Varma, GM, LESA.