A wierd excuse by power officials on Thursday night took residents by surprise.

The Patna Electric Supply Undertaking (Pesu) official apparently refused to restore power citing the immersion ceremony of Lord Vishwakarma idols.

Residents at the Kasturba Path area of the upscale Boring Road locality faced a frustrating time for at least an hour-and-a-half after power went off around 8.20pm in some parts of the area.

Things got worse when the residents came to know that a power phase of the locality had been damaged and that it required a repairing work or else power wouldn’t be restored.

“When I called the local SK Puri power sub-station to lodge a complaint and request them to send a mechanic to the area, the person on the other end refused. He went on to say that owing to the immersion ceremony of Lord Vishwakarma, there were no electricians present. I pleaded again and again but the man said it was their only festival and no one was around,” said Prashant Kumar, a resident of the area.

He added: “It was very humid on Thursday and no power would mean a sleepless night. We had to wait till the morning.”

Other residents, too, made calls to the landline number of sub-station but the number was busy throughout.

“I had no choice but contact a journalist who lives in the same area. I went to his place but found out that he had not come back from work. As I was returning back, I spotted him entering his apartment and rushed to him and told him about the problem. His apartment too was in dark and he offered to help,” Prashant said.

When The Telegraph called up the power sub-station, it got the same answer.

“I was tired and it was very humid compounding my frustration. When I found no response from the junior employees who kept on repeating the immersion excuse, I decided to call the higher-ups. I messaged the problem to H.R Pandey, the deputy general manager (public relations) of the Bihar State Power (Holding) Company Limited. To my relief, he immediately called back and assured me that he was looking into the matter. By then it was almost 9.30pm and some people had come out on the road. I managed to get the number of Santosh, the junior engineer of the area, and called him. He said he was trying to restore power. Around 10pm, the power was restored and I got calls from both the officials who inquired about it. In between, I had called up the sub-station number again and the person who answered this time said he didn’t have a clue about anything and banged the phone down,” the resident said.

Pesu officials said such excuses would not be tolerated.

“I too had come to know about the matter. Once I got the information, I immediately contacted the junior engineer and asked him to work on it. Even I was surprised as to how could such kind of an excuse be given. We at Pesu are trying to ensure that people get enough power all the time. If such an incident comes to us, we will immediately remove those people and get efficient ones in their place. It is true that many people tend to call up senior officials as they get poor response from their juniors. Such kind of a response from officials will not be tolerated at any cost,” Dilip Singh, the superintending engineer (Patna west), said.