⚡️ Political Promises vs. Power Reality: Mirzapur’s Electricity Crisis

The persistent and often unscheduled power outages in Mirzapur are starkly illuminating the gap between political promises and the ground reality of public services. A recent grievance filed with the Prime Minister’s Office highlights the consumer’s frustration, directly questioning the much-publicized commitment of a 24-hour electricity supply.

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The Grievance: A Critical Look at Disruption

The formal complaint, registered as PMOPG/E/2025/0042006, exposes how routine maintenance is used as a justification for city-wide, day-long power shutdowns, effectively contradicting the government’s ambitious claims.

📝 Key Details of the Complaint

• Complainant: Yogi M. P. Singh
• Date of Receipt: 26/03/2025
• Received By: Prime Minister’s Office
• Concerned Authority: Executive Engineer Electricity Distribution Division II, Fataha, Mirzapur.
• Current Status (as of 26/03/2025): Under Process. The case was forwarded to Shri Arvind Mohan, Joint Secretary in the Chief Minister Secretariat, Uttar Pradesh.

🚧 The Reason for Disruption: A Flawed Rationale

The immediate cause of the power cut was cited as the renovation of a dilapidated low-voltage transmission line near the transformer at Bathua Road.

The core of the complainant’s argument is that the low-voltage (LV) line requiring repair is located just below the medium/high-voltage (MV/HV) line. The need to de-energise the entire supply grid for a localised LV repair—specifically, only 200 meters of wire—is seen as an overly disruptive and “flimsy ground” for cutting power to the entire city.

📊 Understanding the Three Tiers of Power Distribution

The grievance astutely breaks down the power transmission process to challenge the necessity of a large-scale shutdown for a local repair:

1. High Voltage (HV) Transmission ($\approx$ 33,000 V): Power sent from production centres (like Anapra or Obara) to district-level distribution centers via step-up transformers.
2. Medium High Voltage (MV) Transmission ($>$ 1,000 V): Power supplied from distribution centres to local transformers via step-down transformers.
3. Low Voltage (LV) Transmission ($\approx$ 440 V): The final supply provided by local transformers to consumers’ houses. This is the segment that required repair.

The complainant argues that since city areas have a vast network of local transformers, a fault in a short segment of the final LV wire should logically only require isolating and disrupting power from that specific local transformer, not the entire city’s supply sourced from the upstream MV/HV line.

🗣️ The Political-Administrative Disconnect

The most scathing part of the complaint is the direct comparison between “election rhetoric” and “frequent disruption.”

On the one side of the screen, there is claim of 24 hours supply of electricity by our political masters but on the other side of screen there is frequent disruption in the supply of electricity on the flimsy grounds. We understand everything we are not stupid.”

This sentiment reflects a deep public fatigue with an infrastructure system that seems either technically incapable of targeted repairs or structurally organised in a way that prioritises simplicity for the utility over convenience for the consumer. The dependence of LV repairs on shutting down major upstream lines suggests a network design issue that guarantees repeated, city-wide inconvenience for necessary routine maintenance.

💡 The Way Forward: Demand for Modernisation and Accountability

The resolution of this grievance will be a litmus test for the administration. If the root cause is indeed the network’s architectural constraint—where LV lines pass under MV/HV lines, necessitating a full shutdown for safety during maintenance—it demands a long-term, systematic fix, potentially under schemes like the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS).

Citizens are demanding accountability and a move beyond paper-based “disposal” of complaints to genuine infrastructure modernisation that aligns with the promised 24/7 power supply.

🛠️ From Promise to Performance: Steps for the CM and PM to Ensure 24/7 Power

The grievance from Mirzapur highlights a critical breakdown: the failure of the local electricity distribution network to sustain the 24-hour power supply promised by the Chief Minister (CM) and Prime Minister (PM).¹

The core technical problem is conducting Low Voltage (LV) line repair by shutting down the entire city’s Medium/High Voltage (MV/HV) supply, a measure taken for safety because the lines are physically stacked.^{2 The response from the government offices must address this systemic flaw, not just the single complaint.}

Here are the essential steps that the CM’s Office and the PM’s Office must coordinate to turn the promise into a reliable reality:

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I. Immediate Actions: Accountability and Mitigation

Action	Responsibility	Description
1. Investigate and Issue a Public Explanation	CM’s Office/UP Energy Dept.	Mandate a system for mandatory, timely, and geo-specific SMS/app notifications to affected consumers for any scheduled outage, providing a clear start and end time (not “the entire day”). Undeclared breakdowns should be strictly penalized.
2. Enforce Targeted Load Shedding	UP Energy Dept. (Executive Engineer)	Immediately adopt a protocol where routine maintenance affects only the supply from the specific Distribution Transformer (DT) being worked on, not the entire feeder or city area. Use mobile generators or temporary bypasses if isolation is technically impossible.
3. Implement Strict Communication Protocol	UP Energy Dept.	Mandate a system for mandatory, timely, and geo-specific SMS/app notifications to affected consumers for any scheduled outage, providing a clear start and end time (not “the entire day”). Undeclared breakdowns should be strictly penalised.

II. Medium-Term Structural Reforms: Network Modernisation

This is the most critical area, requiring capital investment under central schemes like the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS), which the UP government is already implementing.

• A. Separation of Feeder Lines (De-stacking):
  • Action: Undertake a major project to physically separate or re-route low-voltage (440V) lines so they do not run directly underneath or in close proximity to the medium-voltage (e.g., 11kV) lines. This eliminates the safety requirement of shutting down the entire MV line for routine LV work.
  • Justification: This directly addresses the core complaint: a localised LV fault will no longer necessitate a city-wide power cut.
• B. Adoption of Aerial Bunched Cables (AB Cable):
  • Action: Accelerate the replacement of bare LV overhead conductors with AB Cables (which are insulated). This significantly reduces faults caused by wire entanglement, tree branches, or other physical disturbances, thus reducing the need for emergency repairs.
  • Status in Mirzapur: UP has an ongoing project to replace bare conductors with AB Cables, which must be expedited for urban areas like Mirzapur.³
• C. Installation of Isolation/Ring Main Units (RMUs):
  • Action: Install more Ring Main Units (RMUs) and load-break switches at the Distribution Substation (DSS) level. These devices allow the utility to isolate only the faulty section of a feeder line while keeping the rest of the feeder operational, thereby reducing the affected area from the entire city to a small colony.

III. Long-Term Policy Vision: Sustained Reliability

• A. CM/PM Oversight on Implementation:
  • Action: The CM’s office should establish a “24/7 Power Dashboard” with real-time data on supply hours, AT&C losses, and maintenance-related disruptions for every major city (like Mirzapur). This moves the conversation from political rhetoric to data-driven governance.
  • Role of PMO: Ensure the Central Government’s financial and technical support (like RDSS grants) is flowing efficiently to the state and that project deadlines are met.
• B. Prioritise Preventive Maintenance (PM):
  • Action: Shift the distribution company’s focus from reactive repair to scheduled, planned Preventive Maintenance. PM should be done during off-peak hours (e.g., late night/early morning) to minimise consumer impact.
  • Incentives: Link the Executive Engineer’s performance appraisal directly to the number of unscheduled power cuts and the average duration of outages.

By implementing these structural and operational changes, the offices of the CM and PM can demonstrate that their promise of 24-hour electricity is backed by concrete action to create a modern, resilient power distribution network.