Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Jan 6: Major parts of Jammu city and its outskirts remained without power supply since early this morning because of the failure of the Power Development Department to rectify the faults which developed at several places due to overnight rainfall. This situation has erupted at a time when Civil Secretariat is functioning from the winter capital and the State Legislature is in session.
According to the reports, maximum areas of Jammu City and its outskirts plunged into darkness from wee hours of Friday after a fault developed in 33 KV line at Danis Gate and 33 KV line at Canal Grid.
Exposing the incompetence of the PDD officers as well as lack of coordination with M/s IRCON India International Ltd, which has been entrusted the task of remodelling power infrastructure in winter capital, several areas of Jammu city and in its immediate periphery remained without electricity till late in the night. These areas include major parts of Jammu West constituency particularly Talab Tillo, Bohri, Gole Gujral and Lohan Paloura.
Power supply also remained affected in Muthi, Barnai, Patoli Brahmana, Gura Keran, Damana, Bantalab and other adjoining areas till late in the evening because of slackness on the part of PDD.
There was lot of resentment among the people of these various areas as on one side the concerned officers of the Power Development Department were not in a position to give any specific time-frame for the restoration of power supply and on the other side officers of M/s IRCON were completely reluctant to deploy engineers for rectification of faults.
“Since the task of augmentation of infrastructure has been assigned to M/s IRCON, we timely informed them about the snags but there was cold-shoulder response from their side”, an official of the Power Development Department said on the condition of anonymity.
One of the officers of the IRCON, Mr Pandey when contacted by EXCELSIOR said, “I am busy in farewell party and cannot attend the grievances of people. Moreover, the weather doesn’t permit us for restoration work”.
“It is a matter of serious concern that at a time when enough Central assistance is being given to J&K Government for providing uninterrupted power supply to the people, the concerned officers of PDD as well as M/s IRCON have failed to even rectify the faults in a time bound manner”, sources regretted.
According to the reports, power supply also remained badly affected in Kathua town, Basholi, Bani, Billawar and other areas of the district during the day. The power was restored in Kathua during the evening for sometime but later the town again plunged into darkness due to another snag.
Similar reports were also received from Samba, Udhampur, Rajouri, Poonch and other parts of Jammu province.
When contacted, Chief Engineer, M&RE Ashwani Gupta said that due to fault at various places the power supply remained affected and field staff of the department was on the job to restore the same. “We are leaving no stone unturned to restore the power”, he added. The Chief Engineer, however, failed to give any specific time-frame for the same.
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