Panels & live wires lying in open, outages add to Ardee City’s woes

Gurgaon: Residents of Ardee City in Sector 52 have complained of frequent power outages and obsolete transformers, which catch fire often. Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN) officials have been working on updating the power infrastructure after the builder, Ardee, handed over its maintenance last year. As a result, several malfunctioning electrical panels and meters, with live wires out in the open, have been lying unattended at many places in the sector and pose a serious hazard in the rains, residents said.
Ardee was initially in charge of supplying power to residents. “The builder was in charge of maintenance and transformers distributed power internally, but erratically. Since they are quite old, power outages have been a regular thing for some time now. We approached the DHBVN a year back and got all the meters replaced, but during the high demand in peak summer, some of them caught fire,” said Sunil Varma (name changed), a telecom engineer and resident.
“Since then, those meter boxes and panels with live wires have been lying unattended in a park adjacent to our house. Our kids have stopped going to the park. Another box is lying on the main road, and we are afraid it might pose a threat to passersby and strays,” he added.
Those who have been staying in the neighbourhood for the past ten years recalled that they witnessed outages almost 7-8 hours each day. “Over 2,000 families that reside here staged protests against the pathetic service provided by the builder and finally got discom connections. Power cuts are still a regular occurrence, but less than before. I don’t blame the discom entirely, they have been working day and night to replace the obsolete infrastructure. What is worrying is that around seven electricity panels that they uprooted last month have been lying unattended. We have complained to the engineers on duty but they have ignored our requests,” said Ankit, another resident who works as a pilot with Indigo.
Residents also alleged that they haven’t received electricity bills from the discom for the past 11 months. A few received bills earlier this month, but claimed that they were charged “unusually” high.
RWA member Poornima Singh said, “Despite paying a huge sum as electricity and maintenance charges, the infrastructure is still the same. Around two weeks ago, another fire broke out in a transformer and some meter boxes. Cables spark whenever it rains. The RWA has sent several emails to DHBVN, but they keep passing the buck.”
When contacted, DHBVN chief engineer Sanjeev Chopra said they have recently installed 14 transformers in society. “The electricity panels installed are outdated and we’ll replace them in the next 15 days. We’ll get the open meter boxes and wires removed by next week,” he added.