THE HINDU

Heavy power cuts from today

Two-hour cut in Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Vizag, Tirupati and Warangal

Major cities in the State, including the State Capital, will face a two-hour power cut from Friday even as the power utilities have decided to impose heavy cuts in other areas.

In addition to Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Tirupati and Warangal will face two-hour cut every day, while the load shedding, as the authorities call it, will be more pronounced in mandals and villages. The Transco took recourse to power cuts as the demand shot up to 305 million units a day, while the generation was 235 MU from all sources, including purchases.

Villages to be hit hard

According to officials, the duration of the power cut in district headquarters and municipal corporations would be fours hours and in towns and municipalities six hours. Mandal headquarters will face the brunt with an eight-hour cut, while the situation in villages will be worse as they will get power along with the supply for agricultural pumpsets, which is seven-hour supply.

The cut for all the places from Hyderabad down to villages would be implemented necessarily in two spells. Orders had been issued to the four distribution companies to compulsorily provide electricity from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. for lighting purpose in rural areas, in view of the students appearing for various examinations. The cuts are likely to continue till mid-April when the agriculture load is expected to tapper off gradually.