Mumbai won't face any power cuts, says Chandrashekhar Bawankule

Mumbai: A day after facing criticism over load-shedding in city areas, energy minister Mr Chandrashekhar Bawankule said that cities would not be affected by it. In a statement on Friday, the minister said that it was a temporary phase and would end in the next 15 days.  “Mumbai’s power supply has been fulfilled and we will ensure that the cities are not affected. This is the first time that we are facing shortage in the power,” he said.

Earlier, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP, Mr Kirit Somaiya’s tweet had sparked rumours about load-shedding being withdrawn from the city. He tweeted, “LoadShedding withdrawn from all A & B zone of Maharashtra, areas where leakage/chori not much including major parts of Thane, Pune and Nagpur.”  On Thursday, suburban Mumbai, Thane, Bhandup, Mulund and Navi Mumbai experienced load shedding, thus embarrassing the state government.

Meanwhile, the drop in temperatures on Friday and the rainfall in some areas brought relief for the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL), as the demand for power came down. According to information received by the MSEDCL, on Friday the demand for power was 17,800 mw with 15,700 mw available, thereby creating a shortage of 2,500 mw to 3,000 mw. “The company has reduced power supply by two hours to agriculture pumps during the night considering the high demand at present,” the MSEDC statement said.  

Load-shedding was reduced in A and B category areas by half. The A, B, C, D areas are bifurcated in descending order based on their distribution and collection losses. “Instead of four hours, load shedding of two hours was conducted in B areas. In A areas, the load shedding was conducted only once instead of twice a day. Areas E, F, G1, G2 and G3 also faced load shedding,” an official from MSEDCL said.