Power woes deepen despair in flood-hit Kashmir

Consumers, both in metered and non-metered areas, have been protesting against “diminishing” electricity supply for the past some weeks.
In the summer capital Srinagar, many parts of the city are metered but the prolonged cuts have mounted problems of people who are struggling to return to normal life following the devastating flood that hit Kashmir this September.
“The unscheduled power cuts of two to three hours have become a routine in our locality for the past 15 days and the situation turns grim during the evening hours when we expect uninterrupted supply,” said Muhammad Arshad of Shivpora locality here.
The extended cuts by the Power Development Department (PDD) surface in Kashmir as an ‘unwritten rule’ soon after ‘Durbar’ (seat of governance) shifts to Jammu in November as a bi-annual practice known as Durbar Move.
A visibly upset Shafiq Ahmad of Humhama said with each passing day, the frequency of unscheduled cuts is growing in his locality. “This is happening despite our area being fully metered,” he told Greater Kashmir.
Chief Engineer (Commercial) Khursheed Ahmad said against the demand of 1500 MW, the department is supplying around 1150 MW electricity. “We are sticking to last year’s curtailment schedule,” he said. “We are locally generating 100 to 150 MW from our own power projects this time and the remaining supply is purchased from outside.”
In November 2013, the PDD had announced a revised power curtailment schedule for Kashmir in which scheduled power cuts in metered and non-metered areas were increased to 17 and 57 hours per-week, respectively.
However the Department has come under fire for “violating” its own schedule by resorting to unscheduled and pesky power cuts.
The situation is equally worse in many rural parts of Kashmir which are mostly non-metered. Most of the villages and townships face long cuts.
“Every year we are assured of better power supply but the situation instead worsens,” said Muhammad Hanief of Baramulla town. “They (authorities) resort to power cuts as per their own wishes in our locality.”
Sources in the PDD said the curtailment schedule for winter was being framed as per the availability of electricity.
“In winter when the local generation dips drastically, it puts huge pressure on available power supply and widening gap is overcome by resorting to unscheduled cuts sometimes,” they said.
They said the dip in local generation from hydropower projects owing to low discharge in rivers was also resulting in “management of schedule sometimes.”
“The fact is that there is shortage of power which forces us to go for cuts,” said an official.