Ludhiana: Local authorities are deploying emergency water tankers to desperate neighbourhoods as an uncoordinated mix of unscheduled blackouts and administrative gridlock over automated prepaid electricity meters cripples municipal pumping stations.
This summer has brought punishing heat to this industrial hub of Punjab. Ludhiana's municipal grid relies on more than 1,400 deep-well tube pumps to extract over 600 million litres of groundwater daily. However, civic officials say the state electricity provider's unscheduled power cuts frequently hit during scheduled water distribution hours.
Even when power returns, the system lacks the pressure required to pump water into elevated residential storage tanks or to households located on higher ground. Additionally, the electricity department recently began installing state-mandated “smart meters” on municipal water pumps. These meters cut power to the pumps automatically the moment municipal accounts run out of credit.
The municipal corporation has made a formal request for an exemption from the automated system, arguing that bulk government accounts are settled periodically and that recharging individual pump meters manually in real time is “difficult”. While emergency tankers are being sent to the worst-hit areas, local representatives note that a single replenishment cycle takes up to three hours.
Municipal engineers claimed to have requested a fixed power outage schedule from the electricity provider to allow residents time to store water, but the request was denied because the blackouts were traced to localised transformer overloads and grid faults rather than planned load shedding.
Superintending engineer Ekjot Singh declined to comment on the escalating infrastructure standoff.
