Mumbai: Parts of Mumbai’s suburbs and island city, including Kandivli, Andheri, Powai, Matunga and Dadar, saw power outages of up to 9 hours Friday through Saturday. Many residents complained that service providers offered no communication on either their cause or when supply would be restored.The disruptions were the latest in a series of sudden blackouts plaguing some pockets of the city this month—stretching from 3 hours to 12 hours—while the peak power demand has stayed high between 4,300MW and 4,400MW, underscoring the strain on Mumbai’s distribution network. While there was no official word on the cause of the overnight power cuts, BEST, Adani Electricity and Tata Power had in recent times blamed cable faults, feeder failures and transformer tripping and the high strain on the distribution network owing to peak power consumption .Parts of Matunga East, especially around the area covering BEST substation and Napoo Hall, saw the longest disruption—from 8.30pm on Friday till 5.30am on Saturday. While technical teams moved to restore supply, residents spent a sleepless night amid the muggy weather. Those in high-rises bore the brunt of it since their lifts couldn’t be operated.“BEST should have an announcement system to inform residents of the cause of power disruptions and the time required for repairs,” said a local. He said the BEST substation with residential flats had power supply. BEST power supply division officials were unavailable for comment.Dadar Parsi Colony saw a 7.5-hour power cut. Girgaum and Wadala were affected on Friday, while parts of Dadar West were plunged into darkness overnight. A resident of Parsi Colony wondered if the outage was “due to sudden overnight digging of footpaths to lay cables”. Last week, a few buildings in Dadar faced intermittent power cuts lasting over 12 hours.A resident of Gokhale Road in Kandivli West said the area had up to 30-minute power cuts every night this week, culminating in a longer disruption from 11pm on Friday till 2am on Saturday.MLA Amin Patel said recurring outages exposed gaps in response capacity. “Nearly 1,000 faults requiring permanent repairs are pending in south Mumbai alone,” said Patel, who met BEST management a few days back. “BEST officials acknowledged that they are short-staffed and it’s a real mess handling power cut issues… In many cases, it takes hours for power supply to be restored.” He said the few teams on the job were being stretched thin to handle more calls and complaints daily.Sources said the time taken to restore supply during outages has risen to 3-5 hours in several cases. In recent days, complaints of power cuts have also come in from Antop Hill and Vile Parle East and West.Former BEST panel member Ravi Raja called the undertaking’s customer call centre an “eyewash”. Committee member Nitin Nandgaonkar said consumers often fail to get through to officials during power cuts, triggering frustration and quarrels, and called for a 24×7 call centre with six phone lines.
