Suhail Rather

Bandipora, Nov 20 (KNS): North Kashmir's Bandipora is reeling in darkness due to a shortage of power supply, and prolonged outages.

Locals said that the power department is resorting to long power cuts which has made life difficult amid cold weather conditions.

The residents from several villages including town area residents are now fuming at the power department asking them to provide reasons for not following the power schedule.

Locals say despite smart meters and other infrastructure in place all areas in the district have been hit by the outages.

Businessmen, students and all say they have to go through difficult circumstances when temperatures have plunged to sub-zero levels.

Locals are saying there is no accountability and that the department is resorting to outages at their own will and whim.

"There is no schedule being followed, electricity supply remains out for hours together, " Mohammad Ibraheem a resident said. The locals said despite the power curtailment schedule, "the power supply remains erratic."

Notably, under various schemes the power department has also built a system for effective metering to ensure high voltage power while minimizing the load, however, locals said the outages continue despite the system being put in place for some years now.Click Here To Follow Our WhatsApp Channel

"With prevailing cold weather conditions erratic power supply and long outages is frustrating," one more resident said.

Notably, some villages in Gurez valleys Dawar, which amount to 1600 households also received electricity from Bandipora's Pautshai Grid station from November 2023, although non-metered, the areas are too reeling under darkness.

Business owners are also fuming sharing it has been impacting client-customer relationships and bringing them losses.

Meanwhile, the officials have said the Bandipora division has a 93 MW agreeable load while the current requirement was 163 MW.

The officials are expressing helplessness due to the energy deficit and are also appealing for judicious use of electricity in winter to help overcome outages.

The officials say they have to resort to "curtailments" as transformers are not able to handle the extra load with feeders to developing snags due to the same reason with energy deficit already adding to the woes. (KNS)