LUCKNOW: In an election year, the mounting power cuts across Uttar Pradesh have triggered sharp reactions, with both the ruling BJP and opposition lawmakers shooting off letters and social media post to petition state Energy Minister Arvind Kumar Sharma over the worsening power crisis during peak summer.
Calling the issue “extremely sensitive and urgent, BJP MLA from Gonda Sadar, Prateek Bhushan Singh, wrote a strongly worded letter to state power minister on Friday describing a “serious electricity crisis” in Gonda district and his assembly constituency.
In his letter, Singh said repeated outages amid intense heat had pushed residents into severe distress and disrupted normal life, workplaces and business activity.
He acknowledged technical challenges such as overloaded transformers, snapped wires due to storms and infrastructure stress caused by rising demand, but said public anger was growing because of prolonged and irregular supply failures.
Prateek Singh, son of former MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, urged the minister to ensure an emergency mechanism for uninterrupted power supply, particularly during night hours, and sought immediate intervention for a permanent solution.
Similarly, Biswa BJP MLA Nirmal Verma also wrote to the energy minister, saying both urban and rural areas of his constituency in Sitapur district had been facing continuous scheduled power cuts for several days. He warned that the outages had severely affected trade, agriculture and daily life and urged officials to restore normal supply at the earliest.
Moreover, Rajeshwar Singh, BJP MLA from Sarojininagr Assembly segment in Lucknow, also wrote to the Power Minister complaining about frequent outages for hours together and resultant distress prevailing among residents of his constituency. Rajeshwar Singh urged the minister to get the power supply restored to beat the peaking summer.
Former chief minister and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav also attacked the BJP government over the crisis. In a public appeal, he urged people not to vent anger on linemen and junior electricity employees, claiming they were already working under pressure after large scale contractual staff layoffs. Yadav blamed the state govt for failing to strengthen generation, transmission and distribution systems despite rising demand.
Nagina MP Chandra Shekhar Azad also raised the worsening situation of power supply by writing to AK Sharma, highlighting the frequent outages in rural and semi-urban areas. He said students, farmers, labourers and small traders were among the worst affected.
In Lucknow, MLA Dr Neeraj Bora also submitted complaints about power cuts affecting the state capital and the adjoining areas urging the minister to take corrective measures soon.
However, in the wake of the growing power crisis, CM Yogi Adityanath has called a high-level meeting on Sunday morning.
On the other, in major crackdown on senior officials, two executive engineers, Ghaziabad's Rahul an Meerut's Yogesh Kumar, were suspended on Saturday.
Meanwhile, hitting out at SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, Power Minister AK Sharma said that while showing mirror to others, one should see one one's reflection in it. The minister took to X to respond to Akhilesh's criticism in an elaborate 19-point post.
