Power cut at power minister’s meet

In a sort of irony, electricity went off thrice during a press conference being addressed by power minister Piyush Goyal on Friday morning on the achievements of the Modi government in the last two years in the power sector.

Mr Goyal was listing the achievements of the Modi government to make India a power surplus country when, at 11.25 am, the electricity went off for the first time at the state-of-the-art National Media Centre on Raisina Road in New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) area.

Even though Mr Goyal tried to blame state governments for not buying enough power from the exchanges to contain power outages, the NDMC area is under the direct administrative control of the Centre and not the Delhi government.

The minister took the electricity cut in his stride and quipped, “I think I mentioned last time that my wife tells me that power should go off once in every programme that I hold so that I can be sure that I have miles to go before I rest and sleep. I don’t know whether now they’ve made it a practice because of her guidance or it is actually gone.”

The minister said that he doesn’t have a magic wand, “which you all will appreciate”. “The country had backlog of development of 66 years when I became minister,” he said.

Press Information Bureau director-general, Frank Noronha, who was conducting the press conference, clarified, “We always had uninterrupted power supply and it is because of that the back up took some time extra.”

The power supply was restored, but in order to avoid further tripping, the supply was maintained on DG sets. Mr Goyal, who decided to have lunch with the journalists, was seen profusely sweating due to less-than-adequate air conditioning at the National Media Centre. The PIB DG ordered an enquiry into the power incident, which blamed power cut on the NDMC.

“According to the preliminary enquiry report received on power tripping during the press conference of Piyush Goyal, Minister of State for power, coal and new and renewable energy at the National Media Centre, there was a power failure at 11.25 am from the NDMC side,” said PIB. It said that National Media Centre has a back-up of four Gensets — 2 Gensets of 500 KVA and 2 Gensets of 750 KVA which are in a auto mode.

“Soon after the power failure, the sets started on automode but due to surge in requirement of power the air circuit braker of the supply tripped and load automatically transferred to 500 KVA gensets. Since the power supply was not stable in automatic mode, PIB officials took the decision to put the gensets into manual mode and maintain the supply without any further tripping till the end of the press conference,” it said.