Santanu Saraswati
Kolkata, April 23—With mercury level soaring, reaching 40.1 degree Celsius, four degree above normal level, and relative humidity over 88 per cent, city found no way out from long hours of power cuts on Thursday.
State’s generation units at Sagardighi, Bakreshwar and Bandel and tow major units at Durgapur shut down with no hopes of resuming generation in the next two days. The shortfall in CESC’s area was little more than 170-mega watt in domestic and 40-mega watts in industrial areas, while it was 620 in state board areas, including Salt Lake and few parts of Howrah and 24 Parganas.
Irrespective of abnormal rise in temperature, people found no relief as the power utilities started shedding since morning. Residents of Ramrajatalla in Howrah, Regent Park in Tollygange, Garia, Bansdroni, Survey Park, Kasba, Regent Estate, Naktala, Behala, Diamond Harbour Road, Prince Anwar Shah Road, Prince Bakhtiar Shah Road, Prince Gulam Muhammad Shah Road, Golf Garden, Golf Green, Jadavpur, Maniktala, Beliaghata, Belgachhia, Mall Road, Dum Dum, Ultadanga, Nager Bazar, Shyam Bazar, had to go through the ordeal of blistering summer and power cuts varying from two to three hours. Kasba and Gold Park were worst affected.
The situation turned worst as NTPC’s two units at Farakka stopped generation—one because of shortage of water in the River Ganges, and other because of a technical snag reported on Wednesday night. The state board gets 730-mega watts from NTPC on a normal day. And units at Sagardighi, Bakreshwar, Bandel and Durgapur generate 1160-mega watts. The state board, however, managed to get 300-mega watts of electricity from Rajasthan State Electricity Board (RSEB) and run all the four units at Purulia Pump Storage to meet the crisis, at least to some extent.
“We have directed the generation company to find out every possible ways to end this crisis,” additional chief secretary, state power department, Sunil Mitra said. Mitra also directed the Durgapur Projects Limited (DPL) authority to resume generation of all its seven units, including the newly installed Dong Fang Electric’s 300-mega watt thermal power station in Durgapur that was lying shut down since last Sunday.
Though there was no report of power cuts in Salt Lake, districts like Malda, Cooch Behar, Murshidabad, Purulia and Bankura are going without power for more than 16 hours since Wednesday. The Cooch Behar district Forward Bloc apprehends that this could hamper their poll prospect in the forthcoming parliamentary polls scheduled on 30 April. “If we can’t solve this problem, it could affect our candidate’s prospect in the Lok Sabha polls,” said, Forward Bloc district secretary, Udayan Guha, said.
Meanwhile, the state power department has decided to hold talks with the Coal India Limited, and request the CIL authority to consider Bengal’s case as an emergency. The power department has also decided to hold talks with all the coal supplying agencies, so that state units can have convenient supply of coal to run the generation units. “We will holding talks with CIL chairman too, “ Mitra added.
EOM
santanu_saraswati@hotmail.com
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