People stage a hunger strike demanding regular power supply in Gaya, on Friday. Picture by Suman

Gaya/Patna, April 29: Do not be surprised if you receive a text message that reads: “Janata jo malik kahlati hain, woh garmi me narkiya jiwan jeene ko majboor aur janata ke naukar hamare paise se AC or cooler me Diwali manaa rahe hain: jago Gaya walon, jago (The people, who are supposed to be masters, are forced to live in the heat while the public servants are enjoying themselves under ACs and coolers they have bought with our money: Wake up Gaya residents, wake up).”

After protests, roadblocks, dharnas, Gandhigiri and even a hunger strike failed to solve the power crisis in the city, a group of intellectuals have launched a text message campaign to mobilise public opinion against erratic power supply and unequal distribution of the supply in different parts of the city on a rotational basis.

The text message campaign has caught the imagination of the people and the recipients of the messages eagerly forward it to their contacts. In Gaya, normal life has been thrown out of gear with hardly three to four hours of power supply each day.

Arvind Kumar, secretary, Professor Colony Vikas Samitee, told The Telegraph: “Now even intellectuals have been compelled to join the agitation for power.” Despite these protests, there has been no respite from power shortage for the residents.

A senior Bihar State Electricity Board (BSEB) official of the Magadh area board, on condition of anonymity, told The Telegraph that from 3pm today, 20MW power had been supplied to Gaya. Before this, the supply was between 5MW and 10MW. At times there was no supply at all. He added supply has been very poor for the past three to four days.

On Friday, the power situation remained grim in the state and even Bodhgaya had just four hours of power supply. In other district headquarters, power was available for only a couple of hours.

In the wake of violence outside Patna because of non-availability of power, BSEB chairman P.K. Rai has written a letter to the Union power ministry demanding 350MW additional power from the unallocated quota of power produced by National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) in the eastern zone.

“Out of the 6,800MW produced by the eastern zone of NTPC, around 1,020MW falls in the discretionary quota of the Centre. Unfortunately none of the eastern states are getting power from this quota and it is transferred to the western states,” Rai said.

He also pointed out in his letter that though Bihar has a quota of around 1,692MW, the actual supply was less than half of other states like Karnataka and Maharashtra, which gets 50 per cent of the power produced at thermal plants in their state.

“In Bihar, the allocation from Kahalgaon is far less than 50 per cent,” Rai said, stressing the state should get 50 per cent of the 1,650MW power from Barh thermal plant, which is expected to come in to production from December.