HEATED DEBATE: The former president of Dakshina Kannada Zilla Panchayat Mamatha D.S. Gatti (standing) speaking at the special meeting of the panchayat in Mangalore on Wednesday. — Photo: R. Eswarraj

MANGALORE: Members of the Dakshina Kannada Zilla Panchayat cutting across party lines vented their ire over irregular power supply, at a special general meeting convened to discuss the progress achieved by various departments under the panchayat here on Wednesday.

It required a detailed explanation from a senior official of Mangalore Electricity Supply Company Ltd. to cool their tempers. The members wanted to know why they were not informed about Tuesday's meeting convened by B. Nagaraj Shetty, district in-charge Minister, to discuss the issue at the Deputy Commissioner's office. Thungappa Bangera of the BJP and Shavul Hameed of the Congress expressed reservations on being left out of Tuesday's review meeting on the power crisis.

The former panchayat president Mamatha D.S. Gatti said that it had become a habit with officials not to inform members about such critical developments. She said that the members had no intimation about the visit of a high-ranking official to the panchayat office recently.

A.M. Kunjappa, chief executive officer, said that panchayat president Sushma Janardhan and vice-president Rajashri Hegde had attended the meeting on Tuesday along with other elected representatives of the district. He said that the members would be informed when the Principal Secretary, Panchayati Raj and Rural Development, visited the institution. Vijay Kumar, Executive Engineer, MESCOM, Puttur sub-division, said that the company had no direct role in deciding on the hours of power supply and the officials were implementing the directives given by the Government. Delay in implementation of infrastructure augmentation plans drawn up by MESCOM had resulted in situation getting out of hand, he said. Failure of a 75-mVA transformer at the 220/110-kV power receiving station at Kavoor had added to the problem, he said.

Borewells

The issue of tardy progress in drilling and commissioning borewells also figured in the meeting. Ms. Gatti said contractors were not ready to execute work allotted to them and this would worsen the water scarcity problem in rural areas in the coming days.

Mr. Kunjappa said that steps would be taken to ensure that borewells were sunk before May 15.

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