The Helpline and official phone lines at the RSEB offices are ringing all day long for the last 15 days now as helpless residents of Udaipur city are facing frequent power cuts and are battling the scorching summers with temperature going up everyday.

From Udaipur city alone, more than 300 complaints are being recorded every day at the Helpline.

According to the staff at the RSEB/AVVNL offices, most of the complaints are received between 9am and 1pm. Over the last couple of weeks however, the number of of complaints between 2pm to 8am have gone up tremendously. In the city, the calls are forwarded to the Junior Engineers, Assistant Engineers and Executive Engineers of AVVNL.

Officials are attributed the outages to feeder tripping due to overloads, damage to underground cables, transformer malfunction and other departmental works.

The Executive Engineer AVVNL K. S Sisodiya told Udaipur Times that on 22 May, the Debari Kankroli Electric Transmission Sub station had tripped (Power transmission stopped). It was at around 12.28 when the 220 Watt line had a trouble and the power supply from the line stopped, resulting in power cuts across various areas of the city and in the upcountry areas, which were not even under the jurisdiction of AVVNL and this power cut situation continued for more than 4 hours. The AVVNL team, however, continued to work at the sub station for remove the fault.

He explained that the Power supply is divided into several categories like Production, Transmission and Supply. At present at the related departments, be it Production or Supply are having ample quantity of Power but the Transmission department is having some technical issues. Due to this, the supply has been adversely effected, he added.

Sisodiya elaborated that at present, Udaipur, due to frequent electric trips or electric failures, is only getting power supply from the Chittorgarh Line, which is considered to be 50% of the total electric power generation and that is the only reason that when one area of the city is facing power cuts the other one is getting the power supply as the department is keeping one Phase switched off and other one remains switched on.

Amid all this, the residents of Udaipur are ultimately facing problems. The lack of power supply is adversely affecting work, availability of potable water, and the resulting voltage spikes are not only disrupting everyday life, but also putting electrical equipment at risk.

Residents are expressing their anger over the power cut-off and are demanding that the situation be rectified as soon as possible. A large group of people was seen at the RSEB office near Gulab Bagh, demanding explanations and resolution of the problem.

Speaking to a few residents, UT was told (without giving out names) that the officials always claims that they are striving hard to make Udaipur more equipped under the Smart City project. However, when it comes to 'power cuts' they remain mute. What is making the residents further agitated, is that the helplines are not responding or even if there is a response, the support team is not reaching the place where the malfunction has happened.

The District Collector, in his review meeting on 23 May, has specified that the department officers need to show more empathy and responsbility towards the issues of the residents. He also said that the with the current situation, Udaipur residents will have to contend with frequent disruption in Power Supply and Potable Water Supply for another month, at least.