Govt remains buried under 3 inches of snow

Power, water supply, drainage, communication systems collapse in Kashmir

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Jan 8: With the near-total breakdown of power, water supply and communication systems, life has been thrown completely out of gear in Kashmir valley even as Chief Minister Omar Abdullah is camping here alongwith senior bureaucrats and making desperate attempts to restore services. This situation of crisis and chaos has nailed the administration’s false claims of disaster management and preparedness ahead of winter.

Less than three inches of snowfall on Saturday, which had been predicted in repeated statements from Divisional Commissioner’s office since last week, has thrown life completely out of gear in entire Kashmir valley. All claims of disaster management and preparedness for the natural calamity by the administration have proved false as the entire Valley has been reeling under total darkness since Friday afternoon and all the services and systems dependent on electricity have gone awry.

Notwithstanding Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s camping here alongwith a team of Ministers and bureaucrats and making desperate attempts to restore the systems, there was little improvement on day three of the catastrophe today. In the one-odd soothing development, Srinagar Airport remained fully operational and all flights, excluding one morning flight of Go Air, operated today. Even on the worst day on Saturday, most of the afternoon flights had operated but proceeded directly to New Delhi while skipping Jammu due to poor visibility there.

Surface communication between the Valley and the rest of the word remained cut off on the third consecutive day as Srinagar-Jammu national highway remained badly affected by accumulation of snow from Qazigund to Banihal. Besides, acute slippery conditions on Batote-Patnitop patch made operation of all types of traffic impossible. Landslides on Ramban-Banihal patch also blocked the highway at several places.

Addressing a news conference here this evening, Chief Minister said that the highway had been fully cleared of snow from Qazigund to Banihal. He said that operation of traffic was still very difficult in Patnitop area due to acute slippery conditions and freezing of water on the road surface. He was hopeful that one-way traffic on the highway would be restored by Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning.

Power breakdown has caused the worst crisis as the Valley has been continuously reeling under darkness since Friday evening. Chief Minister’s much hyped orders of freezing the power supply to his home and other VIP clusters until restoration of electricity to the ordinary population has failed to minimize the miseries, today at least. However, after more than 36 hours of total breakdown, electricity was supplied to Srinagar and some rural areas on rotational basis but not for more than aggregate of three hours in 24 hours in any area.

Power was supplied to these localities for intermittent durations of 20 to 30 minutes by rotation. It only helped the telephone subscribers to recharge batteries of their mobile phones. Some of the consumers could also recharge their fully discharged inverters and car batteries. Those having unaffected water supply could also fill up their overhead tanks with electric motors.

Due to the power breakdown, dependent telecommunication, healthcare, water supply and drainage systems also collapsed. BSNL’s Broadband and landline services operated without much disruption but the mobile phone systems remained badly hit with indication of “NO SERVICE” in most of the areas. BSNL’s GPRS internet system remained completely shut since Friday last. However, Tata Indicom’s Photon remained unaffected in most of the areas. It had little relevance as computers and laptops of over 90% of the population remained frozen due to total exhaustion of batteries.

Doctors failed to conduct many of the scheduled surgical and diagnostic procedures at all hospitals. Cable television networks too have been fully dysfunctional since Friday last. Reports said that most of the ATMs too failed to work yesterday and today in the Valley. Water supply and drainage systems remained badly affected due to non-availability of power and freezing of GI pipes under sub zero temperature. Srinagar recorded the coldest day of the year as the maximum temperature here was 0.6 degree Celsius and the minimum plummeted to the lowest of the season i.e minus 5.5 degree Celsius. Conditions were worse in high altitude areas like Gulmarg which recorded the lowest of the decade at minus 16.5 degrees.

Addressing the press conference in the evening, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said that as against the total availability of nearly 1000 mw until Thursday last, not more than 155 mw was available today. He said that the breakdown was the result of a major transmission disruption in Chanderkote-Ramban area. He said that both the key transmission lines---440 kv Kishenpur-Wagora as well as 220 kv Kishenpur-Pampore had got cut off. According to him, just 60 mw of water was available from the 480 mw NHPC-run Uri project and just 15 mw from the 105 mw state-run LJHP. In addition, 90 mw was available from the twin gas turbines of Pampore which had been operated last week only. He said that hospitals, water plants, dewatering stations, telecommunication installations besides Radio Kashmir and Doordarshan were the government’s top priority and rest of the meager availability was going to the ordinary population.

Chief Minister said that a team of engineers had been called in from New Delhi and pressed into service to restore the transmission lines at Chanderkote. He was hopeful that the supply would be partially restored by 2100 hours tonight or till Monday morning. According to him, additional 200 mw of power would be available by Monday morning and full of 1000 mw till Monday evening or Tuesday morning.

Nobody from the Government has so far explained why the disruption was not restricted to only the inflow of nearly 400 mw that came through the two particular transmission lines. Until yesterday, PDD authorities had been claiming that out of 950 mw power pool, nearly 550 mw was coming from the local hydroelectric generation besides two 50 mw gas turbines at Pampore.

Highly placed official sources revealed to this newspaper that the NHPC authorities on Saturday made it clear to a high level visiting team of officials, comprising Principal Secretary Planning B B Vyas and Principal Secretary Power Sudhanshu Pandey that the corporation would not provide any more quantity of power to the state government.

END