Nagpur: More than 24 hours after power supply was disrupted to several civic installations, including around 20 traffic signals, CCTV cameras and other Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) facilities, and later restored, neither Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd (MSEDCL) nor NMC can conclusively explain what triggered the outages.The outages began on Friday morning, particularly affecting traffic signals equipped with smart meters. CCTV cameras and some public gardens, playgrounds and even Ambazari Ghat were also affected, raising questions over whether the incident was caused by a technical glitch or an operational error during remote meter management.Speaking to TOI, DCP (Traffic) Aditya Milkhelkar confirmed that around 19 to 20 traffic signals remained non-functional for several hours.“Signals at many important locations, including Shankar Nagar, Sahakar Nagar and others, suddenly lost power, creating a major traffic chaos. MSEDCL told us that the connections were cut due to non-payment of bills. NMC, which is the nodal agency for maintaining signals and paying bills, told us that the bills have been paid,” said Milkhelkar.The outages forced police to manually regulate traffic at several busy intersections. Sources said commissioner of police Vishwas Nangre Patil later spoke to senior MSEDCL officials, following which the affected connections were restored.MSEDCL superintending engineer Praful Lande said the issue was resolved soon after complaints were received. He did not offer a definitive explanation for the incident, saying only that it “could be a glitch”.Earlier, a senior MSEDCL official told TOI that higher authorities had directed the agency responsible for smart meter installations to remotely switch off connections to NMC streetlight in the morning to save power. As per the official, field staff had cautioned that several civic installations might share the same electrical connections, and if remote action was taken without proper segregation, they too could be disconnected.But officials have not confirmed whether it was the reason behind the outages at signals, gardens, playgrounds and Ambazari Ghat.MSEDCL’s Congress Nagar zone executive engineer Rahul Vitode said the connection at Ambazari Ghat was restored late on Friday night. “The officials of the company appointed for smart meter installations were not able to remotely restore the connection. So, we had to call their officials to manually restore it. The cause of disconnection is still not clear,” said Vitode.
