With the ruling political class and state bureaucracy enjoying the cool climes in the Valley, unbridled power cuts and night outages amid humid conditions have made life difficult for Jammu residents.
Despite the slogan of bringing ‘Achhe Din’, the PDP-BJP coalition government is forcing people to spend sleepless nights as residents are battling long and unscheduled power cuts.
“It’s a double whammy for the residents of Jammu who are not just reeling under humid conditions but also bearing the brunt of a casual approach of the Power Development Department. Long and unscheduled power cuts and fluctuations have made the situation worse,” Sanjeev Kumar, a resident of Shastri Nagar, said.
Incidentally, Deputy CM Nirmal Singh also holds the power portfolio. Residents complain that BJP ministers and MLAs were comfortably sitting in Kashmir without bothering about the people of the Jammu region.
Apart from the hour-long cuts, repeated spells of outages lasting for a couple of minutes are destroying sensitive electronic equipment in homes. However, senior officials of the department were not available for comment.
“Earlier, the government would ensure that electricity supply is maintained during religious festivals. But now, even on festivals there is no electricity,” said Javid Ahmed from Doda town.
The department does not have infrastructure to transmit and store electricity which is the sole reason for the prevailing chaos. “In Jammu, we have not been able to utilise the additional power to J&K from the Centre because the region has only 800 MW intake capacity as against 1,450 MW in Kashmir,” said a power department official.
The peak-hour demand is about 2,700 MW while the government has been able to transmit only about 2,200 MW electricity to J&K. That is the main reasonthe department is enforcing more power cuts.
Protest against dept
Workers of the Dogra Front and the Shiv Sena on Wednesday staged a protest against the power department authorities for failing to provide electricity to the people of Jammu. They demanded that the Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh regions should have their own power departments.
As demand goes up, Residents suffer unscheduled power cuts
