A view of evening traffic in blacked-out Anantapur city on Monday. DC
Hyderabad: The state had just half its daily requirement of electricity on the second day of the Seemandhra electricity employees strike on Monday. With 4,200 MW remaining off grid, emergency services and train movement were badly affected.
Most vital installations including the Vizag and Vijayawada airports are running on back-up power systems, as were major factories and most shops in the region.
While the city experienced power outages intermittently, Visakhapatnam, Krishna, Nellore, East and West Godavari, Anantapur, Kadapa and Kurnool districts experienced crippling power shortages.
APTransco officials announced that they would impose power cuts from 8 am to 12 noon and from 1 pm to 5 pm on Tuesday. The power cuts may be increased in coming days, deputy executive engineer Venkateswarlu said.
For the first time in its history, all seven generation units at the 1,760 MW Dr Narla Tata Rao Thermal Power Station were completely shut down.
With no power, drinking water supply, train services and hospitals were affected as were shops and industries. The prolonged power cuts also affected several ATMs in the Seemandhra region.
Close to 100 feeders and 166 transformers have tripped, and there is no one to fix them. Substations have tripped in Anantapur, Kurnool and Kadapa districts. Small industries in the region were completely closed on Monday, Autonagar Cluster Association member P. Raja said.
Centre may step in
Ch V.M. Krishna Rao I DC
Hyderabad: Confusion and speculation were rife on Monday evening regarding the first meeting of the newly constituted Group of Ministers on the bifurcation of state as well as the Union Cabinet’s unscheduled meeting on Tuesday to take stock of the situation in state. There were also reports the Congress Core Group may meet earlier in the day.
Rumours are that the Centre is seriously considering “stepping in” as the inputs reaching New Delhi from the state are quite disturbing due to the continuing agitations by the government employees from Seemandhra for the last 65 days and the power employees’ strike which is likely to affect the southern grid.
Apparently the Chief Ministers of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka have lodged complaints with the Central Electricity Authority against possible tripping of power in their states in view of power employees striking work at all generation stations in AP.
Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde, along with finance minister P. Chidambaram, who is also heading the 10-member GoM, met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday evening, triggering speculation that the Centre was searching for “alternatives” to control the situation in AP.
Shinde on Monday appealed to the APNGOs as well as the power staff to call off their strike immediately and restore normalcy in the state.
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