Punjab industry faces fourteen-hour power cuts as the crisis deepens
Category 2 and 3 industrial consumers lost supply from about 4.30pm on Saturday until 6am on Sunday. A week ago the scheduled cut was five hours.
Punjab's power crisis deepened on Saturday, with industrial consumers in Categories 2 and 3 facing scheduled cuts of up to 14 hours in several parts of the state. Domestic consumers reported unscheduled outages of four to five hours a day.
Supply to the affected industrial categories was switched off from around 4.30pm, and PSPCL officials confirmed it would remain suspended until 6am on Sunday.
How quickly it escalated
A week earlier, industrial units faced a scheduled five-hour cut, generally from 7pm to midnight.
Industry received relief for two days on 8 and 9 September. On 10 September the scheduled shutdown was extended to run from 8pm to 6am, which effectively ended night shifts at several units.
Saturday's extension took it further still — from late afternoon through to the following morning.
Ludhiana
In Ludhiana, which industry representatives say contributes more than 60% of Punjab's industrial output, industrialists said Saturday's 4.30pm shutdown came without prior notice. Several said their supply had been disconnected around 3pm; PSPCL officials maintained the shutdown for the affected category began at 4.30pm.
Gurmeet Singh Kular, president of the Federation of Industrial and Commercial Organisation, described the position bluntly. "How are we going to survive like this? We have not seen such a crisis ever in our lives," he said.
FICO has put an alternative to the utility. Kular said the federation had suggested that instead of disrupting industrial operations every day, compulsory weekly offs of 24 hours could be imposed on industries on a rotational basis.
The logic of that proposal is predictability. A unit that knows which day it loses can plan labour and orders around it; a unit that does not know how many hours it will lose cannot.
The unpredictability
That is the complaint industry has pressed hardest.
"We are not told how many hours the power will remain off on a particular day," said Pankaj Sharma, president of the Association of Trade and Industries Undertakings. He noted that industry carries expenses regardless — labour, raw material and fixed commitments.
Beyond the factory gate
The cuts reach households as well, because several villages receive electricity through feeders that predominantly serve industrial consumers.
Villages including Seera, Gaunsgarh and Boothgarh in Ludhiana are among those affected, according to industry representatives.
Sharma pointed to the areas where industrial workers live close to their workplaces — Dhandari Kalan, Dhandari Khurd, Giaspura and Kanganwal in Ludhiana. Those workers, he said, "are now facing nights without electricity after working hard throughout the day".
That is the practical consequence of feeder design. Where a rural or residential area shares a feeder with an industrial estate, a cut aimed at factories takes the homes with it.
Other districts
Category 2 and 3 industries in Jalandhar, Amritsar, Mohali and Rajpura also faced cuts from Saturday evening.
What has not been said
PSPCL has not set out in this account why supply has fallen short, how long the restrictions are expected to continue, or whether the rotational weekly-off proposal from industry is under consideration.
The only forward commitment on the record is the one the utility gave for Saturday night: supply suspended until 6am.
