Santanu Saraswati
Kolkata, April 23—It’s now a battle from within. The CITU-led Electricity Employees Federation of India (EFI) and the SEB Employees Union (SEBEU) have raised questions about the credibility of the fact-finding committee, which will find the reason of last Sunday’s power disaster in the city.
Just a day after the state power department announced a fact-finding committee, the CITU secretary and president of SEBEU and EFI, Prasanta Nandi Chowdhury said: “ Its just empowering the guilty to prove his guilt. We have objections and CITU will let this know to the state power minister Mrinal Banerjee, on Friday. We won’t allow CESC to take upper hand and put the blame on West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (WBSEDCL). If needed, we will make it an issue. A fact finding committee can’t be a mere eye-wash.”
The state power department on Wednesday announced a nine-member committee headed by executive director (programme implementation), CESC, Dipesh Guha. Out of nine, power department has selected seven members from CESC—Dipesh Guha, SS Sinha, Bijay Chakraborty, Aniruddha Bose, Utpal Bhattacharjee, and Gautam Ray. Only two state board high officials were successful in becoming the member of that committee which has to submit report with the state power minister finding way outs as well as holding who was responsible for that disaster.
The CITU secretary, not only raised questions about the credibility of the committee, has termed it as a “tool of befooling CESC’s 22.5 lakh consumers residing in Kolkata, Howrah and some parts of North 24 Parganas.” Nandi Chowdhury said: “Why a power utility be allowed to cater such a large number of consumers when its has to purchase more than 50 per cent of its generation capacity to cater to the need of its consumers? Why the power department will allow a company that can generate only 870-mega watts but has a demand for over 1490-mega watts? CESC’s area of operation should immediately be restricted, otherwise this type of incidents and prolonged power cuts will be order of the day.”
A trip in the 132 KV current transformer (CT) of state power board in Howrah-Liluah distribution system ultimately lead to breakdown of all four generation stations of CESC in just 30 seconds time at 4.42 pm last Sunday. The incident not only sunk the city into darkness, it took more than 10 hours to restore power supply in Kolkata. City’s power utility then put the entire onus on the state board, but was successful in restoring power supply to emergency services like metro railway and government hospitals with the help of 220-mega watts of electricity it received from WBSEDCL’s Kasba distribution station.
The EFI and SEBEU that set up an independent enquiry into the last Sunday’s disaster found that when the CT tripped in Howrah-Liluah feeder, CESC was generating 870-mega watts and drawing 400-mega watts from SEB’s Liluah distribution station. “If CESC stopped drawing power immediately, no generation station would have broken down putting the entire Kolkata into darkness for 10 long hours. But without stop drawing, CESC, which doesn’t have any safety device, continued drawing. CESC’s system should be held responsible for the entire episode,” Nandi Chowdhury added.
Though the CESC’s general manager (commercial), Aniruddha Basu, who is also a member of the committee declined to comment on this issue, the head of the committee, Dipesh Guha told Hindustan Times: “Let SEBEU and EFI prove that we were drawing 400-mega watts of electricity from WBSEDCL that time. Even we, too, have CITU union in CESC. They are with us. And furthermore, facts can be changed, and facts have to be proved.”
EOM
santanu_saraswati@hotmail.com
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