Nearly 12 lakh residents of Chandigarh were virtually held to ransom by staffers of the electricity department as the city plunged into darkness due to a three-day strike call given by the employee unions on Tuesday. “They should have made alternative arrangements for power as they knew about the strike long back,” said a resident, Abhijit Vashisht.
The strike of the power unions in Chandigarh has, however, now been withdrawn and the power supply has been normalised in most of the areas. The power unions gathered at Sector 17 have been dispersed to resume their duties.
The shutdown even exposed the lack of any contingency plan by the Union Territory administration on handling the power blackouts. From hospitals to banks, traffic lights to residential areas, the city has come to a standstill for most residents, businesses and the industry. What fuelled the frustration further for the residents was that one of the sectors (Sector 28-B), housing several employees of the electricity department, had uninterrupted power supply.
The employees, under the banner of the UT Powermen Union, went on a 72-hour complete strike against the privatisation of the department. Residents were agitated at the lack of preparedness despite the unions giving a strike call notice well in advance.
What made matters worse for the administration was that its request for nearly 90 employees each from the Punjab and Haryana governments to restore power supply in the city, filed to elicit any response with the electricity officials in these states expressing solidarity with the Chandigarh officials.
With mounting pressure from the residents and the Chandigarh administration, the city police arrested several officials of the UT Powermen Union for violation of the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) order in a late night crackdown. Chandigarh had asked the protesters to report to work by 10 pm failing which strict action would be initiated against them.
The UT Administration also called in a Military Engineer Services (MES) team to restore power supply in the city following which power was restored in parts of the city.
Hospitals in Chandigarh were not able to resume elective surgeries in view of uncertainty over the power crisis. Dr Suman Singh, Director, Health Services, Chandigarh, said, “The surgeries require proper planning and in view of the ongoing crisis. It is too risky to resume elective surgeries. However, emergency services will remain open.” Power was restored in hospitals on Tuesday afternoon after 7-8 hours of outage.
Earlier in the day, after Punjab and Haryana High court took suo moto cognisance of the Chandigarh blackout, the UT administration had assured the court of restoring power in the entire city by 10 pm today. At the time, 80 per cent of electricity was restored with the help of MES and others. The matter was heard by the high court division bench of Chief Justice Ravi Shanker Jha and Justice Arun Palli.
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