Power shutdown: Parts of Chennai to experience outage on July 15

Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation Limited (TANGEDCO) on Monday released a list of places that will experience a power outage from 9 am to 5 pm on Thursday, July 15, since the power major is expected to carry out maintenance works. The supply will be restored after 5 pm once maintenance works are completed, according to a statement from TANGEDCO.

The areas to experience power outage in Maduravoyal area are MMDA colony, Ganga Nagar, Varalaksmi Nagar, Dhanlakshmi Nagar, Rajiv Gandhi Nagar, Krishna Nagar, Balamurugan Nagar, Ganapathy Nagar, Ayyappa Nagar, Rajarajan Nagar, Vanagaram Mettukuppam road and surrounding areas.

Earlier in June, Electricity Minister Senthil Balaji directed TANGEDCO to not undertake maintenance works during the lockdown period till June 7 since students attend online classes and people are working from home. The minister made the announcement despite TANGEDCO reducing the hours of power shutdown from eight hours to two hours for maintenance.

During the same period, a release from the minister’s office noted that power cuts reported in certain areas are due to the fact that no maintenance work has been carried out since December 2020. TANGEDCO carries out only unavoidable maintenance work on war footing. 

Once the lockdown ended on June 7, TANGEDCO started maintenance work for 10 days and completed the work by June 29. Following this, the minister said that there would be no power cuts in the state since the maintenance work to prevent unscheduled power cuts are over. He said the maintenance works are completed in most parts of the state so TANGEDCO would carry out only monthly maintenance works, and there wouldn’t be any power cuts in the state.

However, the minister criticised the AIADMK government for failing to implement the projects launched by DMK in 2006-2011, and said that steps have been taken to revive the power project of the previous government. He also hit out at AIADMK for TANGEDCO’s debts, saying that the power major was paying Rs 15,000 crore as interest to the loans annually.