Lucknow, Oct 6(UNI) Indefinite strike by the power engineers and employees opposing privatization of the power sector in Uttar Pradesh entered the second day on Tuesday with several places witnessing blackouts.

The state ministers, including the Power Minister Srikant Sharma himself, had to face the blackout for around 90 minutes on Monday evening.

However, late on Monday night, there was a report that the Minister had accepted that government will not go forward with the privatisation move of the Poorwanchal power distribution company. But later, the government backtracked leading to failure of the talks with the agitating employees.

Though the state government had announced that they have made an alternative arrangements to deal with the situation, but it seems that the government has no plans to counter the strike and run the power sector smoothly during this strike.

Striking power employees union leader Shailendra Dubey said here on Tuesday that the workers will continue their protest till the government withdraw their decision on privatization of the power sector.

Due to the strike, 6 generation units of Obra and Anpara thermal power were disrupted due to which 1320 megawatt generation was snapped.

Reports from different cities and rural areas say that not a single power repair work was done on Monday while in several areas, people had to face power cut due to technical fault.

In the state capital too, the VVIP area like Kalidas Magrh, Aliganj,Mahanagar , Hazratganj and other areas too went for load-shedding for couple of hours.

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