Gurez Valley left in darkness

Bandipora, July 20: Scores of residents in Gurez Valley in north Kashmir's Bandipora district have been fuming over negligible electricity supply from the department for months.

The Valley’s centrally located villages in Dawar tehsil, which were connected to the grid for the first time in November 2023, are lamenting a “biased approach” towards their demands, suggesting the administration is “pushing them into darkness”.

“The grid connection was a welcome step, but the electricity supply does not meet our requirements,” said Abdul Rahim Mir, a local.

Locals said that even though the electricity supply was interrupted for most of the time following snowfall on Razdan Top, the restoration process took months.

“But when the power supply was finally restored, we have not witnessed power supply for more than an hour in a day,” Rahim said.

Another local said, “Besides being hardly available, the voltage remains too low, which results in faults and damage to transformers.”

Locals said that they had been making representations day in and day out to the local administration and officials but to no avail.

“Every time there are protests over damaged transformers and faults to transmission lines and feeders," a local said.

Before the grid connectivity, the villagers would receive fixed-hour electricity generated from fuel-operated generators.

However, the locals say, they are now being deprived of both as the “electricity from grid is a mere eyewash”.

Local officials said that over 1600 households in several Dawar villages were receiving power supply from the Bandipora Grid Station, with the most affected receiving station in Gurez being Wampora.

Officials blamed heavy consumption as the cause of load shedding and low voltage.

The villagers, who initially received bills of around Rs 200, are now charged Rs 520 per month, all unmetered.

An official said that they would form a team for night inspections to check those violating power consumption rules, besides installing more transformers in Phase II within a month to ensure “resolution of the problem”.

Officials said that teams had arrived for ground inspections and feasibility reports for metering, however, there was no deadline for that as of now.