Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal pulls up top BSES officials over 'frequent outages'

NEW DELHI: Top officials of BSES have been pulled up by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal over "frequent outages" in areas like Old Delhi and Seelampur during Ramzan, even as the discom claimed that power theft and overloading of distribution transformers are behind the ongoing crisis.

After receiving numerous complaints, Kejriwal visited Seelampur, an area in North East Delhi, last evening during Iftar and spoke to locals and officials. He was accompanied by Power Minister Satyender Jain.

He sought to know from a senior BYPL (BSES Yamuna) official, in full media glare, the reason behind power cuts during Iftar and Sehri, which he said won't be tolerated.

"You are saying there is cable fault but when the Chief Minister visits, it starts working," Kejriwal told the official.

He also directed local MLA Mohd Ishraque to look for land to set up transformers, the lack of which has been cited by BSES as the primary reason behind the faults.

"There are no major outages. However, the distribution network in such areas (Farash Khana, Ballimaran, Nai Sadak, Chawri Bazar, Jama Masjid and adjoining places) is highly stressed due to power theft and overloading of distribution transformers," a BSES official said.

"We have requested Delhi government to arrange for space to augment distribution network. To maintain regular power supply, emergency maintenance work is undertaken from time to time. Being densely populated and congested, it takes longer to complete the task undertaken in these areas," the official said.