Despite power secy’s order, discoms to go for huge power cuts

The two power distributing companies in the city have thrown the direction of the Delhi power secretary into dustbin and declared 2-6 hours of power outage for the next three days in the name of maintenance. The power secretary Arun Goyal on Friday in a review meeting with DISCOMS had issued a direction to refrain from scheduled power outage in the name of maintenance. The direction said that if urgent, the power cut should not be more than one hour in an area.

‘No maintenance work should be carried out during the summer months. If load shedding has to be carried out due to some exceptional and emergent circumstances or system constraints, it should be managed by rotational load shedding and no particular area should be affected for more than one hour at a stretch,’ said Arun Goyal, principal secretary (power) of Delhi government to the DISCOMS in Friday’s review meeting.

But on Saturday, BSES-owned BYPL and Tata owned TPDDL declared a minimum of two hours of power cut in 34 big areas of the city out of which 27 areas fall in the jurisdiction of BYPL and seven areas under TPDDL. The scheduled load shedding is being done in the name of maintenance and related works. BYPL has gone a step further on 25 May and announced four hours power cut in Jhandewalan Extension of Shakar Road from 10 am to 2 pm. For Sunday, BYPL has declared two hours of power cut in four places.

The scheduled load shedding will affect more areas on 26 May when BYPL has announced four hours of power cut in three areas and two hours in 41 areas. On 27 May, BYPL will go for six hours of load shedding in one area and four hours of load shedding in 37 areas of the city.