Power cuts give sleepless night to city residents

LUCKNOW: There was a complete blackout in almost half the city after a ‘series of snags’ in a Sarojini Nagar sub-station on Monday-Tuesday intervening night. Power supply was restored after almost four hours.

Considered to be the ‘mother source’ of electricity, the sub-station first broke down around 12:02am. Officials cited excessive power load as the reason behind the problem. Supply was restored around 12:26am.

However, their efforts proved futile as the transmission line tripped again at 2:12am. “It couldn’t bear the load and tripped again,” an official said. This time, the supply was restored at 2:18am, which snapped again within 10 minutes, affecting almost half of the city.

While supply was restored around 3:30am in some areas, others got it around 4:30am. In the last 10 days, this was the fourth incident when Sarojini Nagar sub-station developed snag.

Major areas affected by the outage included Alambagh, Ashiana, Telibagh, Utretia, Vrindavan, Amausi, Bani and other localities in vicinity.

However, LESA GM AK Srivastava said the breakdown was due to snag in a sub-station in Utretia.

“It’s shameful to see people struggling to get adequate power supply which is a basic amenity. If we continue to move at this pace, UP can never be a developed state,” said Sudhanshu Bharadwaj, a Lucknow University student, residing in Alambagh.

Sudha Sharma, a housewife in the same area, said power cuts were a regular scene here. “It’s a routine affair and power officials always cite overloading as the reason for frequent outages. If overloading is a problem every summer, then why are officials not prepared for it, why our substations still lack adequate equipment that can sustain the overload,” she asked.

A few locals in Telibagh said power scenario was better during the Samajwadi Party regime. “In that time, at least we were getting proper power supply,” said Shobhit Gupta, a trader from Ashiana.

At a time when 24-hour electricity supply is among the top priorities of LESA, frequent snags have exposed their tall claims.