Ghaziabad: Residents protest as hundreds of houses on river Hindon floodplain face electricity disconnection

Hundreds of resident of Kanawani in Indirapuram staged protests on Thursday evening after the officials of the electricity department snapped their connections while citing that these were illegal. The police intervened amid the protests and said that the deadlock was ended after almost two hours.

The Kanawani village is home to migrant workers and villagers and located on floodplain. Over past decade, hundreds of houses here have come up on floodplains of river Hindon.

The residents on Thursday said that the electricity connections of hundreds of houses were snapped during past four days and their homes have blacked out as a result.

“The area has about 1500 houses and the electricity is made available only to about 288 houses at present who the officials said have legal connections. The residents protested as their families, children and old aged people were suffering due to disconnection of power supply to their homes. The lives of people here have suffered. However, with the intervention of police, the residents were sent back to their homes but they still have no electricity,” said Praveen Nagar, a resident.

Narendra Kasana, another resident, said that people protested as majority houses in the locality are without electricity.

“There are poor people and spending a lot on getting electricity through generators and even forced to purchase drinking water as no pumps can operate without electricity,” Kasana said.

The police on the other hand said that they warned the protesters of legal action in case they continue blocking the roads in Ahimsa Khand and the CISF Road.

“The protest resulted in traffic jam and lasted for about two hours. We pacified and also warned them of legal action is they do not disperse. Later, they went home and the roadblock was cleared,” said Bhaskar Verma, officiating ACP of Indirapuram.

The officials of the Paschimanchal Vidyut Vitaran Nigam Limited (PVVNL) said that the issue started four days ago.

“We had a 400kva transformer which broke down due to overloading. We installed another transformer and this also broke down within two hours. These transformers are capable of handling load of about 300-350 houses. When we checked, the load was too high. We did a combing and found that almost 250-300 houses were drawing electricity illegally by adding joints to the electricity cables. We snapped these connections and will soon start supplying power to legal connection holders from a third transformer. These are about 250 houses,” said Mrityunjay Pathak, executive-engineer from PVVNL.

Pathak said that other households cannot get electricity as Kanawani is on floodplain area.

“We have a government order by the chief secretary in 2019 which states that electricity connections cannot be given to houses constructed on floodplain. So, the houses whose illegal connections have been snapped cannot be provided valid connections as per the directions,” he added.

The officials familiar with the development said that their teams often face resistance from locals including women whenever their teams go for enforcement activities in Kanawani.