Rain reduces Delhi's power demand, protests on

Heavy rain in the national capital may have brought down the temperature and the demand for power Thursday, but protests over outages continued.

The Delhi unit of the Congress staged a protest in south Delhi's Khanpur area while four Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) parliamentarians met Power Minister Piyush Goyal and Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung over the issue.

The Delhi government claimed there was "sufficient availability" of power and outages in east Delhi were not too long as they were till Wednesday.

"The power demand reduced considerably from Wednesday's 5,470 MW to 5,253 MW. The weather condition is better and due to fall in temperature, the demand for power has gone down," a statement from the Delhi government said.

Goyal visited several sites where maintenance work of transmission lines is in progress.

Following a storm May 30 which damaged transmission lines in Delhi, the city has seen erratic and long power cuts coupled with the sweltering heat.

In a signed letter to Goyal, AAP's four parliamentarians said: "Strong action should be taken against the private power distribution companies (discoms), which are responsible for maintenance of the distribution network."

The Congress, which seems to be in a mood to continue its stir over power, launched yet another protest.

Delhi Congress chief Arvinder Singh Lovely led the protest and raised slogans against power distribution companies.

"Under our rule of 15 years, Delhi never saw a power crisis. This is unacceptable and we demand immediate relief for the people," Lovely said.

The Congress has been agitating against the erratic power and water supply in different parts of the capital for the past few days.

Wednesday, Congress legislator Jai Kishan along with some residents held a protest in north Delhi's Sultanpuri area.

The May 30 storm also tripped many lines of the Northern Grid, affecting power supply to the national capital.

The Northern Grid supplies power to Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. It covers 30 percent of India's geographical area and supplies power to 28 percent of the country's population.