New Delhi: The power situation deteriorated further on Monday in the national capital as several parts continued to reel under long outages in the sweltering heat with mercury touching a record breaking high of 45.5 degrees Celsius.
Areas across the city faced blackouts of up to six hours as a number of power transmission lines maintained by Delhi Transco Ltd (DTL), a Delhi government utility, tripped today. The DTL is yet to repair all the transmission lines damaged by the devastating storm 10 days ago.
In more bad news, top Delhi government officials said the power situation is unlikely to improve in the next three weeks as repairing the damaged transmission network will take time.
Chief Secretary S K Srivastava reviewed the situation at a high-level meeting and instructed power department to do their best to improve the situation.
Angry people came out to the streets to protest against power cuts in various areas of North and West Delhi.
The long power cuts affected operations at various water treatment plants in the city affecting supply of water to many areas.
Meanwhile, Congress MLAs and ex-MLAs held a protest against the long power cuts at Delhi Secretariat by locking the Chief Secretary in his room for over one-and-a-half hours. They ended their protest after he gave a written assurance that government will make all efforts to improve the situation.
"Officials are attributing the recent thunderstorm for the worsening situation of electricity and water in the city. I want to tell them that 148 thunderstorms were reported during the regime of Congress-led government, but there was never such situation like this before," DPCC chief Arvinder Singh Lovely said.
