A shopkeeper fans himself in Gaya on Monday, as the power crisis continued to plague the state. Picture by Suman

Patna, April 11: The residents of the state, bearing the brunt of acute power shortage for the past one month, would have wait a few more days for normal electricity supply from the central sector.

Reason: Suspension of generation at one unit each at National Thermal Power Corporation’s (NTPC) facilities at Talcher, Kahalgaon and Farakka.

“We have requested the NTPC to pay special attention to the state to reduce chances of breakdown and to rotate the scheduled maintenance of their plants so that power supply to the state is not hampered. Moreover, we have also asked the general managers of both the Barauni and Kanti thermal plants to pay special attention to their plants so that they can run without any interruption,” Bihar State Electricity Board chairman P.K. Rai told The Telegraph.

The power situation turned grim in the state when it started receiving 730MW of electricity against the scheduled allocation of 1,692MW to 1,722MW from the central sector. The generation at the state’s joint venture firm with NTPC at Kanti, which has been generating around 70MW to 80MW, also stopped generating power.

“The state is facing power shortage owing to NTPC’s two units — one each at Farakka (unit 5) and Kahalgaon (unit 4) — going for scheduled maintenance apart from suspension of generation at its Talcher plant that supplies around 180MW to the state,” the board spokesperson and public relations director H.R. Pandey told The Telegraph.

“The state receives around 50MW and 125MW from Kahalgaon unit 4 and Farakka unit 5, respectively, but as these units are undergoing scheduled maintenance work, the state is facing acute power shortage,” Pandey said, adding: “As a short-term measure, we will request NTPC officials to restore generation at the earliest.”

The acute power shortage has not left the state capital untouched. It faces load-shedding of around two to three hours on a rotational basis but the worst sufferers have been the people living in 37 districts of the state who get barely six to seven hours of power supply daily. The capital, on an average, is supplied around 413MW of electricity but after the crisis, the supply hovers between 300MW and 350MW, sources said.

“Have you ever heard of any state capital facing power shortage on such a regular basis? It is really unfortunate that the chief minister himself admits that power shortage will continue to haunt the state for the next two-three years,” said Manoj Kumar Singh, a resident of LIC Colony, Kankerbagh.