Ardee City residents carry out midnight protest against developer for power cuts

Agitated with the long power cuts, the residents of Ardee City staged a protest outside the developer’s complaint centre on Wednesday night. As the power went off around 9.45 pm, a total of 150 residents assembled outside the complaint centre and continued to protest till 4 am in the morning.

The group of protesters included children and elderly people who shouted slogans against the Ardee developer and Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN). They were also agitated with DHBVN as they failed to provide direct connection to them. The power was only restored by 8 am in the morning.

“The residents created a ruckus in the night for no reason. The situation is not as bad as they claim. I will not say anything else in this regard,” said Chandan Kumar, general manager of Ardee Infra.

The residents also had heated arguments with the employees stationed at complaint centre of Ardee Infrastructure Private Limited. The residents informed that the employees were instructed to do load shedding.

“Ten-hour-long load shedding is not justified and we believe the developer is harassing us intentionally. We pay DHBVN bills and we pay the maintenance charge to the developer,” Dr Isha Sharma, a resident, said.

The Ardee City residents’ welfare association (RWA) has also planned a meeting which is intended to request the DHBVN to give direct connections. In the present arrangement, the DHBVN has provided a single-point connection to Ardee developer.

“We have fought a long battle with the developer over power cuts. The developer got 5MW load sanctioned for the initial population 20 years ago. Now, the population has grown four to five times. The developer has to install a substation but has been ignoring it for the past three years. That is why we have applied for direct connections from the DHBVN,” RWA president Praveen Yadav said.

As per the reports, DHBVN has taken cognizance of the residents’ appeal of direct electricity connections.