Whereas there was no rostering of power on Sunday across the mountain State as the daily schedule of the State power department suggests, citizens had to experience power cuts even in urban areas for over four hours on Monday.
According to Uttarakhand Power Corporation limited (UPCl)’s tentative supply and power position for Monday load shedding was expected for only one hour in urban areas like Haldwani and Rudrapur cities, the power supply remained disrupted in Haldwani for over three hours from 12.30 on Monday afternoon hitting the normal life badly.
The power supply was restored around 3 pm, but it went off again after 4 pm. The matter of fact is that the people have been facing long and unscheduled power cuts here for long despite Cabinet Minister and MlA from Haldwani Indira Hridayesh’s claims that Haldwani and Nainital cities are kept out of load shedding.
More so, power breakdown for three to four hours has become a routine affair here for many days. As the affected citizens have complained basic services like drinking water supply have been badly hit by the ongoing unscheduled power cuts.
Since load shedding is not conducted under any time frame, most of the time power breakdown coincides with timing of release of drinking water from the tube wells. Thus the poor power supply has also badly affected the drinking water supply, said Suresh Chand, a resident of Haldwani’s Kusumkhera area.
Though the officials concerned claim to have made alternative arrangements for drinking water with the help of water tankers, these alternative arrangements seem to be insufficient, he added.
As the irrigation system is also power driven the agriculture sector particularly in Terai region is not less affected on account of poor availability of power.
After harvesting of the Rabi crop this is high time for us to reap different kind early variety of vegetables or crops, but due to the ongoing power crisis we have not been able to make the most of this period, said Kishan Kumar, a local farmer of Golapar area of Haldwani.
Now we are only praying for early arrival of monsoon, he added. In the meanwhile, it seems increasing demand for power seems to be one of the major factors causing the shortfall of the electricity in the State.
As the figures provided by UPCl reflect, actual demand for power which was 32.71 million unit (mu) per day on May 1, is now hovering around 37 mu or 38 mu per day. However, there has been no major improvement in net availability of power during the past one month.
According to the statics provided by the UPCl, the net availability of power in Uttarakhand which was about 32 mu per day as on May 1, remains available nowadays only about 35 mu i.e. 16 mu per day from State generation, about 15 mu per day from the Central pool and rest from other sources.