The jurisdiction of West Tripura District and Sessions Courts and other sub-ordinate courts were badly affected on Tuesday due to loss of power supply during Monday night. Today, also the power supply remained disrupted. The prolonged outage in some serious cases has led to the judge’s office being closed. It cannot run without electricity,” the advocate said.
Two days now after Cyclone Remal hit Tripura, there is still no power restoration in many parts of the state including several places in Agartala leaving people dissatisfied which they prompted to take actions at different places since Tuesday violence. This has left inhabitants of Agartala city centre without water for two days.
It was alleged that a number of calls made by offices TSECL from across Tripura State Electricity Corporation Limited (TSECL) went unanswered. For the last couple of days its toll-free number has been disconnected, while when dialed it appears as if nobody is picking up other phone numbers too. In order to curb public anger, call office of TSECCL located at upazila was shut down for past two days.
In contrast, opposition Congress stage a sit-down protest in front of TSECL’s head office demanding Step down Power Minister Nath immediately restore application claims that he outsourced partners related to electricity consumers to a number of external bodies which have never started operating properly yet this situation did not force the department end such services.
“Soon after forming government by former chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb who outsourced power services through private companies and used those firms’ money instead TSECL became state’s topmost power supplier over six years bye tenant an unproductive corporation these companies are now closing their business activities throughout Tripura because TSECL does not have enough funds; hence it fails respond adequately towards complaints and then minister acts behind them.”
However, Power Minister Ratan Lal Nath claimed that since Monday night, TSECL officials and staff of outsourced power restoration agencies have been working tirelessly in the worst weather but the damage is so massive and widespread that they cannot manage it. And said: “In addition to broken power lines and damaged transformers, the entire system collapsed due to lightning strikes in many places.”
He added that a preliminary assessment showed that Remar caused more than 250 million rupees worth of damages to the power infrastructure with over 2,000 complaints received by the Power Department about more than half of which were attended to as at now. Ultimately, 668 electric poles were destroyed; outages on 234km of lines took place along with destroyed wires while 82 transformers failed.
The minister said, “As a result of the intense heat wave this year there was a demand for electricity in Agartala environs in May. Power usage went up by leaps and bounds as householders have not kept power department abreast of defrosting their air conditioners.” This has lead to increased power consumption and destroyed power transformers, transmission lines, sudden storms, and thunderbolts.
Meanwhile, opposition leader and senior CPI-Maoist leader Jitendra Chaudhury claimed that under the BJP rule, the most profitable TSECL was looted by cadres and to secure their business Services are leased out to private companies from the outside.” “TSECCL’s assets which have been established through so many struggles for two decades since inception of Left Front are gone now”. Also ‘pain today is because for six years there were no recruitments at the lower’
