Port Blair Sept 25: Every time the lights flicker here in this capital city of Andaman Islands, residents hold their breath—not because of darkness, but because another appliance may be on its last breath. From televisions and computers to small business equipment, voltage swings have turned into a silent destroyer of household savings.
The culprit, locals say, is no mystery: Ageing transformers, overloaded feeders, loose connections and sheer neglect by the Electricity Department. While citizens continue to pay soaring power bills, their gadgets keep burning out—often beyond repair.
Instead of fixing the rot, authorities routinely shift the blame to consumers, advising them to invest in stabilizers and surge protectors. But residents know too well: no stabilizer can shield them from the kind of wild voltage surges triggered by systemic negligence.
Under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, households are not helpless. They have the right to move the Consumer Forum and demand compensation—a right that has been upheld across the country whenever power utilities failed to deliver safe, reliable electricity.
The demand is simple: Stable power is not a luxury, it is a right. Unless faulty transformers are replaced, overloaded feeders balanced, and infrastructure modernized, this will remain more than a technical issue—it will be an administrative failure.
The question now is not whether appliances will fail—but how long citizens must foot the bill for official indifference.
(Author: Dr. Dinesh, Ex-Member, State Consumer Commission.)
