Patna, June 4: Patna Electric Supply Undertaking (Pesu) has decided to replace faulty and dilapidated cables on a priority basis in the next three months, giving hopes of uninterrupted power supply caused by the snapping of critically damaged electric cables during heavy downpour and storms.

In the past few weeks, the residents of Bihar capital, who have largely been affected by long power cuts even when the state received around 50 per cent quota of power from the central sector, had to spend without power for about four to 10 hours during pre-monsoon showers and storms.

The reason is that out of 3,000km wires spread across Patna, around 500 are faulty and critically damaged that need to be replaced urgently.

“Pesu has already identified the places where these cables (electric lines) are in a dilapidated state and can fall anytime. Therefore, the undertaking has already launched a special drive to replace the faulty lines on a priority basis. The replacement will be done in a phase-wise manner within a stipulated timeframe,” Pesu, which supplies power in the capital, general manager-cum-chief engineer S.K.P. Singh told The Telegraph.

Out of around 3,000km of total transmission and distribution lines falling under Pesu’s jurisdiction, around 1,000km are in bad shape, of which 500km cables are in extremely critical state, which would be replaced first, Singh said.

The undertaking has so far replaced 132km dilapidated transmission lines in the capital, Singh said, adding that the rest of re-conducting would be done on a priority basis in three months’ time.

The general manager said: “Now, we have assigned the task of replacing such dilapidated cables to junior engineers. We have more than 40 of them and each of them will be given the responsibility of replacing 1km wire every week. If every junior engineer ensures his target every week, we could replace about 150km to 175km of such wires in a month and in this way, we could achieve the target of replacing 500 critically damaged wires within three months.”

The general manager said the under has sufficient wires required for the purpose.

Chief minister Nitish Kumar during a high-level meeting of the energy department few months ago, had expressed concern over the condition of the electric wires in the state and directed the board officials to replace 72,000km of wires in a phase-wise manner on a priority basis to provide unhindered power supply to the people to avoid any kind of power cuts because of faulty transmission lines.