Even as a cyclonic storm threatened to add to the sufferings of the people in coastal Andhra, there was no sign of an early end to the four-day-long blackout and shutdown caused by the anti-Telangana protest.
Government employees in Andhra and Rayalaseema regions, including 30,000 power sector workers, have refused to call off their indefinite strike. Meanwhile, a cyclonic storm that hit the Andaman and Nicobar islands on Wednesday is expected to reach the coast of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha during the next 48-72 hours.
A senior scientist at the Meteorological Department said: “The storm is likely to cross north Andhra Pradesh and Odisha between Kalingapatanam and Paradip by the night of October 12. We are expecting the wind speed to be around 175-185 kmph. These areas will also experience very heavy rainfall.
“We have sent an advisory to fishermen not to venture into Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal. Fishermen out at sea along north Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal have been advised to return to coast.”
Many parts of coastal Andhra have started receiving heavy rains under the influence of the deep depression over the North Andaman sea.
While the Odisha Government has put the administration in 14 coastal districts on high alert, the Andhra Pradesh Government is also monitoring the situation and has asked the administration to remain alert in north coastal Andhra districts.
Meanwhile, the much-awaited talks between the striking Government employees and Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy ended without any positive results.
The Chief Minister had a three-hour-long meeting with representatives of the United Andhra Pradesh Employees Joint Action Committee and urged them to withdraw their 60-day-old strike.
Reddy assured the Seema-Andhra employees that there will be no bifurcation of the State as long as he is the Chief Minister. However, he was not able to back it with any guarantee.
Coming out of the meeting APNGOs Association president Ashok Babu and other leaders told the media that they have not given any commitment to the Chief Minister as they were concerned about the central leadership making a new statement every day.
“We only told the Chief Minister that we will consider the situation in a meeting with all the organisations of Seema-Andhra employees that will be held on Friday or Saturday,” he said.
The Chief Minister also wanted the employees to cooperate with the Government in dealing with the situation in case a cyclonic storm hits the State’s coast. Ashok Babu said that in such an eventuality, they will cooperate but will not call off the strike.
As the talks failed, it was yet another day of outages, disruption of emergency and train services in most parts of the State.Even as the officials claimed a slight improvement in the power situation, several major cities and towns, as well as rural areas remained in darkness.Even in Hyderabad city there were outages throughout the day and dark clouds and heavy rains towards the evening added to the woes of the people.
Train services on Secunderabad-Vijayawada-Visakhapatnam route, and Nellore-Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar route were seriously disrupted and several trains had to be cancelled or were running late. Trains from other southern States going towards Bhubaneswar and beyond, through coastal Andhra were also hit by the power crisis.
Hospitals, especially children’s wards with incubators, intensive care units and burns wards were the worst-hit and patients were put to a lot of hardship by the blackouts in Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Tirupati and other places. The airports at Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada and Rajahmundry were also facing closure as their backup systems were not fully functional.
The gap between the demand and supply of electricity in Andhra Pradesh was more than 4,000 MW for the third consecutive day on Wednesday.NTPC’s Simhadri project in Visakhapatnam - which is among the most troubled spots - is left with just a day’s supply of coal, even as the Power Ministry claims that the situation is under control.
Official sources said that despite the grim scenario, the Power Ministry on its part is more focused on maintaining a balance between supply and demand of electricity load within the Southern Grid and for this it has asked the State Power Corporation to continue with load shedding and stop electricity supply to industries during peak hours, so that the grid does not collapse.
They claimed that the frequency of supply and demand is being monitored after every two hours, so that the load does not exceed its limit, as this may lead to the tripping of the Southern Grid.
Ironically, while the State-owned power generation plants have been shut down due to the strike, the private sector gas-based power plant of lanco Group in Vijayawada was continuing to function, generating 90 MW. The plant is owned by Congress MP and a leader of anti-Telangana movement l Rajagopal.