Tripura lawyers demonstrate on Agartala street protesting power cuts in courts for two days

Agartala: Lawyers came out on the street of Agartala on Wednesday protesting a prolonged power cut in the West Tripura district and sessions court complex for the past two days after cyclone Remal hit Tripura on Monday night. Despite repeated complaints allegedly the power supply restoration team didn’t respond.
The agitated lawyers gheraoed a senior official of Tripura State Electricity Corporation Ltd (TSECL) in the court premises for an hour demanding immediate restoration of power supply.However, with the assurance of the time-bound action of power minister Ratan Lal Nath, the agitation was withdrawn.
“Proceedings in the West Tripura district and sessions court along with other subsidiary courts were badly affected on Tuesday due to a power cut from the previous night. The electricity supply remained disrupted today. Several serious cases are not being heard and the judges' offices couldn’t function due to prolonged power cuts,” alleged agitating lawyers.
Two days after cyclone Remal hit Tripura, power supply in many places across the state including several locations of the capital city Agartala has not yet been restored irked the citizens and prompted them to resort to agitation in many places since Tuesday. The residents have been running out of water supply for two days in major parts of Agartala.
Allegedly, nobody responded to the calls in Tripura State Electricity Corporation Ltd (TSECL) offices across the state. The toll-free number was kept disconnected and other numbers remained unanswered for the last two days. The TSECL call offices in the villages were shut down for the last two days to prevent public outrage.
Meanwhile, the opposition Congress demonstrated in front of TSECL headquarters in the city demanding the step down of power minister Nath and immediate restoration of power supply. They alleged that the minister and his associates have outsourced consumer services related to power to some outsiders who didn’t work properly since the beginning but the department has not yet discontinued them.
“The former chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb soon after assuming power outsourced the power services to some private companies through whom the profit-making TSECL became a poor corporation in the state in the last six years. Now, those companies are in the process of winding up their business in Tripura, as TSECL does not have much funds, which is why they are not attending to the complaints properly and the minister is backing them,” alleged Congress leader state president Ashis Kumar Saha.
However, power minister Ratan Lal Nath claimed that TSECL officials and the staff of outsourced power restoration agencies have been working relentlessly since Monday night even during the worst weather but the damages were so large and widespread, that they couldn’t manage it and said, “Besides snapping of power lines and damage of transformers, the entire system in many places were collapsed due to lightning.”
He said the initial assessment revealed that Remal caused damage to more than the electricity infrastructure worth Rs 2.5 crore and claimed the power department received over 2000 complaints, and more than half of them have been resolved so far. As many as 668 electric poles were destroyed, 234 km of lines were powerless, wires were damaged, and 82 transformers were found malfunctioning.
The minister said, "The power demand was increased in Agartala periphery in the month of May due to severe heat waves this year. The use of ACs in homes increased manifolds without informing the power department, which caused an increase in power consumption and damaged power transformers, transmission lines, and sudden storms and lightning made the system fragile and vulnerable.”
Meanwhile, leader of the opposition and senior CPI-M leader Jitendra Chaudhury alleged under BJP’s rule most lucrative TSECL were looted by the cadres, and to secure their business leased out the service to private companies from outside and added, “The Left Front built the asset of TSECL fighting against several odds over two decades and now it has nothing remained. There has been no recruitment for the last six years in the lower level, which caused the sufferings today.”