Power supply has been restored to many parts of Gurugram following widespread blackouts triggered by a strike by state power department employees against a regulatory order granting a 25-year parallel distribution licence to a private firm in Gurugram and Nuh, district officials said on Friday.
The minister wasn’t home. In Sector 10’s Hari Nagar, angry residents went to the residence of Haryana minister Rao Narbir Singh around 9:30 pm on Thursday after DHBVN officials stopped answering phones, said local resident Anita Yadav. Sumit Pradhan, president of the Hari Nagar Residents’ Welfare Association, said power was restored within 30 minutes of residents raising the issue at the minister’s residence. Dinesh Vashist, former president of Sector-3, 5 and 6 resident welfare associations, said power supply in their area was restored after midnight, 26 hours after the outage.
Officials said the power disruption was due to a fault in a main high-tension feeder cable supplying power from substation in Palam Vihar which wasn’t repaired till late evening.
“We vented our ire and asked his aides to intervene to get the power supply restored in our area,” she said. “Not a single drop of water was available in our homes, forcing people to buy packaged drinking water,” he said.
Chief minister Nayab Singh Saini and energy minister Anil Vij said the state government had no role in the regulator’s decision and would appeal the HERC order to the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity within a week. At a review meeting, Saini said the government was ready to engage lawyers trusted by the power unions to pursue the case and reiterated that the government’s doors are always open for dialogue.
