Grid at normal gives hope to city

The Board, according to a senior official is now trying to clear the backlog of complaints that have been pending for two days due to the strike. “Given our infrastructure and the large number of consumers that itself is a major task,” he said.

The power supply that had been disrupted due to the two-day-long crisis is being restored with the repair of damaged cables and lines, an official said. With supply from the grid back to normal, the Board official hoped there would be no other problems either.

“Yesterday there was a voltage problem due to the low frequency. But not today,” he insisted. “Even though the mercury dipped further and the peak demand shot up from 1,880 MW yesterday to 2,200 MW today we succeeded in meeting the demand,” he added.

Relieved at the respite provided by the court order, DVB officials said that the core committee now had more time to deliberate over the Justice J.D. Jain committee report on wage hike of DVB employees. The core committee formed by the Delhi government comprises both government and Board officials.

There is, however, some amount of resentment at the attitude of the DVB management towards R.P. Bhaskar, one of the four persons arrested when the city government invoked the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA). “The other three got bail. Bhaskar anyway is a finance officer and was not spearheading themovement. Senior officials should have taken pains to get him out of jail,” a union member said.

The problem, he said, was if Bhaskar remained in jail a day longer he would have to be suspended according to the Board rules. “And why victimise him when there has been a compromise and both sides have decided to work together,” he added.