New Delhi: Large parts of the national capital continued to face long outages in sweltering heat with mercury hovering above 45 degree Celsius even as Delhi government exuded confidence of in the situation by Wednesday.
Power department officials said the situation is likely to improve by Wednesday as the Centre has drawn up an action plan to make available 400 megawatts of additional power.
Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal had a two-and-half hour meeting with Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung and senior executives of Delhi Transco, Power Grid Corporation and power utilities. Goyal promised all required help to Delhi from the Centre to restore normal power supply.
The Centre has also ordered GAIL to provide extra natural gas to power plants in Delhi. Acute scarcity of water was also reported from various areas of the city following the power crisis.
Congress, BJP, AAP blame each other: As the blistering heat has continued to wreak havoc in the national capital, the political parties are blaming each other for the crisis. The power crisis triggered a blamegame with Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) attacking ruling BJP at the Centre for the crisis while the saffron party held the 15-year Sheila Dikshit regime responsible for the situation.
Congress came down hard on BJP, saying the government at the Centre cannot escape responsibility of ensuring power supply to Delhi as the city was under Central rule.
Meanwhile, AAP leader Manish Sisodia with other party members staged a protest outside Union Heath Minister and Delhi BJP chief Harsh Vardhan’s residence on Tuesday over acute power crisis.
