Routine work was disrupted for many residents in nearly half of the city as they had to bear the brunt of power cut on Sunday. Peenya, Rajajinagar, Anand Rao Circle, Hebbal, Banaswadi, Mathikere, Cantonment, parts of Yelahanka and RMV Layout were the worse-affected localities.
A. Manoj, a resident of an apartment complex in Kempapura near Hebbal, had to wait until 6 p.m. to take a printout for his school project, which he has to submit on Monday. There was no power supply at his home since noon.
Sangunni K.S. from the Yelahanka Citizens’ Forum confirmed that there was intermittent power supply on Sunday at his home. N.V. Ramaswamy from Yelahanka New Town also said that there was no power supply in his locality for three hours, but UPS saved the day for them.
Residents in Malleswaram were irritated as they faced one-hour power cut four times through the day. “It is unpredictable and we have not been able to do anything,” Lakshmi K., resident of an independent house, said.
In Sanjay Nagar, because of power cut many residents, who would otherwise pass time watching tele-serials, visited their neighbours. However, in some parts in the same locality residents spent the Sunday happily as there was no power cut at all. Nileema K. from Basaveshwarnagar said there was power supply in her neighbourhood and her house all through the day.
Namma Metro halts for an hour
Passengers of a Namma Metro train were evacuated from near Pennya Industry Namma Metro Station as the train came to a standstill for an hour following power shutdown on Sunday afternoon.
Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) Managing Director Pradeep Singh Kharola said that the train stopped 20 metres away from Yeshwantpur Industry Namma Metro station. It affected the schedules of other trains for an hour. Regular services resumed by evening.
Mr. Kharola said: “Fortunately, all the trains were at the platforms except one. We were able to evacuate the passengers from the affected train. They all came out and reached the station through the sidewalk, meant for emergencies”.
Namma Metro will have multiple power sources by the time the East-West and North-South lines are complete. This is the second time such an event has happened. Earlier, in April last year, there was an outage in Peenya section for an hour.
Thank god, it was a Sunday!
Thank god, it was a Sunday. Otherwise, the impact of the technical snag that triggered shortage of 400 MW of power to Bengaluru city would have been multi-fold. Generally, the power consumption reduces by a considerable extent on Sunday in Bengaluru as it has a large number of industrial units which remain closed on Sunday. Had it been a week day, when the consumption of power is higher, it would have been difficult for Bescom to manage shortage of power to the tune of 400 MW.
KPTCL Executive Engineer dies of cardiac arrest
The pressure under which the staff of public utilities like KPTCL work came to the fore again with a 55-year-old executive engineer dying of cardiac arrest while attending to power shortage issue that gripped Bengaluru city on Sunday afternoon.
According to sources in the KPTCL, C. Manjunath, an executive engineer in Relay & Testing division suffered cardiac arrest and collapsed when he went to bathroom in the middle of attending to the power problem in Hebbal power station. His colleagues, who went to check why he had not returned even after a long time, rushed him to a nearby hospital where he was declared brought dead.
He was also vice-president of the KPTCL Employees’ Association.
