Power outage in Chandigarh: Water supply, hospitals, traffic lights hit

Chandigarh: A three-day strike by electricity department workers has led to a major blackout in Chandigarh. Many areas of the city are without electricity and water for more than 36 hours. Traffic lights are also not working in many parts of the city. Government hospitals have even been forced to postpone many surgeries. 

In court, the administration has put the blame on striking workers, accusing them of "acts of sabotage". "We have a backup plan like we have generators. But you cannot put 100 percent load of a hospital on a generator. So, we had to reschedule or postpone our planned surgeries," Chandigarh Health Services Director Suman Singh told news agency PTI.

The blackout has also affected online classes and coaching institutes in one of India's most well-planned cities.

The electricity workers are protesting against the privatisation of the electricity department. They have apprehensions that privatisation will change their working terms and conditions. Union Territory Advisor Dharam Pal’s meeting with the workers union has failed to yield any result so far.

The administration imposed the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) on Tuesday evening, thereby enforcing a ban on strikes by the electricity department for six months. The administration also claimed to have made arrangements to maintain power supply

The Punjab and Haryana High Court summoned the union territory's Chief Engineer on Wednesday. Justices Ajay Tewari and Pankaj Jain asked the Chief Engineer to apprise the court about the steps taken to tackle the power outage in the city.

"It has been brought to our notice that power supply to large parts of the city of Chandigarh has been disrupted. In the circumstances, we are constrained to take up this matter on the judicial side and have consequently requested the learned senior standing counsel, UT, Chandigarh to apprise us of the arrangements which the administration is making to ensure that undue hardship is not caused to the residents of the city," the court said.

The Chandigarh administration's lawyer Anil Mehta told the court that "the power failure is on account of acts of sabotage by the striking employees".

The blackout has also hit industrial production and manufacturing at some units in the city.