Chandigarh Power Crisis: Reason behind strike, list of sectors hit by electricity outage, status update now and more

Residents of some parts of Chandigarh continued to face power outages on Wednesday morning with electricity supply remaining disrupted after the employees of the electricity department went on a three-day strike against privatisation, as per a PTI report.

Many areas in Chandigarh faced power outages since Monday night after employees of the electricity department launched a three-day strike to protest a privatisation move.

There were, however, reports that electricity supply was getting restored at some places.

Reason behind strike?

- Employees of the electricity department, under the banner of the UT Powermen Union, went on a strike on Monday night against UT Chandigarh administration's move to privatise the electricity department.

- The protesting employees claimed that if the electricity department was privatised, their service conditions would change and it also could lead to a rise in power tariffs.

Power Outage: Impact

- The outage since Monday night forced government hospitals in the union territory to reschedule elective surgeries, besides adversely affecting residential, industrial and commercial areas in the city, PTI reported.

- Not only adversely affecting online classes, there was a chaos on roads with traffic lights at many intersections remained non-functional, the report added.

- Water supply was also hit at some places because of disruption in electricity supply.

- Many shopkeepers said their goods like dairy products, poultry and meat products, which need to be refrigerated, have started getting perished.

- Power disruption has also hit industrial production and manufacturing at some units in the city.

- The areas which faced power outages included sectors 20, 34, 36, 40, 42, 44, 49, 36, Kishangarh and Manimajra.

ESMA invoked

-The Chandigarh administration on Tuesday evening had invoked the Essential Services Maintenance Act, banning strikes by the electricity department for six months.

Chandigarh Power Crisis

-The Punjab and Haryana High court took suo motu notice of the "electricity crisis", and asked the union territory chief engineer to appear before it on Wednesday.

-A division bench of justices Ajay Tewari and Pankaj Jain of the high court directed the chief engineer to apprise the court of the measures being taken to alleviate the power crisis in Chandigarh.

-Senior standing counsel, Chandigarh, Anil Mehta apprised the bench that "the power failure is on account of acts of sabotage by the striking employees".

(With PTI inputs)