Residents of west Patna got a pleasant surprise late on Saturday night. They did not have to face power cut as they had been since Friday afternoon in the wake of 132KV underground Digha-Khagaul cable damage.

Showing a rare alacrity, the power company set up a temporary line to provide power to the Digha grid, from where electricity is supplied to most parts of west Patna. Earlier, the firm had sought a week’s time to rectify the fault. The power is supplied to the Digha grid through two circuits – each having three cables.

Chairman-cum-managing director of Bihar State Power (Holding) Company Limited Pratyaya Amrit, said: “I had said earlier that it will take a week to restore the power supply in the affected areas. But under the leadership of Sanjay Kumar Singh, the managing director of Bihar State Power Transmission Company Ltd, a 10-member team did an extraordinary work by restoring the power supply in just 36 hours. I must thank all of them and the team members would be awarded Rs 5,000 each on August 15 for their excellent work.”

The 10 engineers who executed the rectification work include director (project) Bhaskar Sharma, chief engineer (project) Dadan Singh, general manager-cum-chief engineer (Patna transmission zone) Arun Kumar Sinha, electrical superintending engineer (Patna transmission circle) Arun Kumar Yadav, electrical executive engineer (transmission, Khagaul division) Chitranjan Rai, assistant engineer (transmission, Digha sub-division) Tanmay Pathak, assistant engineer (transmission, sub-division Khagaul) Rohit Kumar, junior electrical engineer (line maintenance, Khagaul sub-division) Arvind Kumar, junior electrical engineer (grid sub-station, Digha) Shivesh Kumar and Mukesh Bharadwaj — the director of Chauhan and Company which works under the power company.

Asked about the way the team rectified the damage, Amrit said: “The local engineers assessed the damage done to the circuit and found that two cables of one circuit and one cable of another circuit were functional. They used the three functional cables to make an alternative circuit and restored power to the Digha grid. This was done at 11.05pm on Saturday, which allowed the power company to restore normal power supply in the affected areas of west Patna.”

Large parts of western Patna were being supplied power on a rotational basis after the cable was damaged.

The team of specialists from Satna reached Patna on Sunday at 12noon to repair the damaged cables and they started the repair work with two existing cable-joint kits.

“The work has started to repair the damaged cable and our engineers are present to learn the process. At the same time, a videography is being done of the complete process to deal with crises in the future. We are also planning an overhead cable in that section so that a similar problem do not arise and for signage we shall now use sheet moulded compound (SMC) which does not get rusted. I also apologise to the people who faced problem because of the cable damage,” said Amrit.

A total of eight cable-joint kits are required for completing the repair work.

The additional kits, which have been imported from Sweden, have reached Delhi and are expected to reach Patna by Monday night. The repair work is likely to be completed in the next six days, after which both the circuits would be available to supply power to the Digha grid. Residents, however, need not worry because the circuit made functional for now is enough to supply the required power to the Digha grid. Amrit said the construction company had been asked not to repeat the same thing in the future. Else, it would face harsh action.

Amrit said the holding company would send its 10 engineers to Massachusetts Institute of Technology for one-week training on August 17 to learn the art of cable repair.