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| Slowly and steadily electricity vanishes from Valley | | | Early Times Report
SRINAGAR, Dec 26: The Power woes of politics apart, the Valley is in for one of its darkest days so far as the supply of electric power is concerned.
The Valley is reeling under intense cold wave conditions these days and to add to the miseries of the people, the PDD has announced a new curtailment schedule. According to this curtailment schedule, the Valley, especially the rural areas those are unmetered, would virtually have no electric supply for most of the time during the day and the night.
Electricity has been the Waterloo of almost all the State governments those have been in power since 1947. But, the NC-Congress alliance beats all; the electric power scenario has been the worst ever since the coalition government came to power and with each year passing the situation is going from bad to worse. Once the main grouse of the PDD had been that the people living in the Valley do not pay their electricity dues and therefore they have no legal right to demand better electricity. During the last three years, every single consumer in the Valley has been paying electricity dues which are now collected through various branches of the Jammu and Kashmir Bank in the State. If a consumer defaults in paying the electricity dues, his/her connection is promptly cut off. The PDD has been carrying out frequent surprise visits to check pilferage and the guilty are also promptly punished. Despite this improvement in the situation there is hardly anything the PDD can pride itself on. The electric supply has deteriorated from erratic to being non-existent while the voltages are such that even energy saver lighting equipments do not work properly. The State government has announced a new power policy. It has also announced that it is likely to get huge amounts as water usage charges besides share from the neighbouring Punjab state. These are the major announcements which have been made in the recent months, but what matters for the average citizen is whether or not he/she gets the required electric power supply as has been assured under the agreements executed between the PDD and its consumers. The basic reason for the absence of any profit making industry in the Valley has traditionally been the lack of timely electric supply which could sustain a credible industrial activity in the Valley. While there is no industrial overloading of the various grid stations, the basic requirement of consumers using the current mainly for lighting and heating purposes is not being met by the PDD. Sometimes the State government says its power import bills have exceeded its paying capacity and sometimes it says there are no sufficient and adequate transmission lines to bring in more electric power into the Valley. The State government recently said it has been supplying 950 megawatts of power to the Valley which is much higher than what was supplied last year. Why then is there no electricity in the Valley? Why there are complaints, protests, agitations and anger among the consumers both in the urban and rural areas of the Valley? The least the State government can do is issue a white paper on the appalling electric power situation in the Valley. If it cannot do better than just curtailments, let this be placed on record. Let the State government admit it has no means to do better than the present tragic situation it has landed the people of the Valley into. Failures must be admitted, these are not something the State government can claim to be sitting on prestige for. |
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