Several residential localities in Ranchi, especially Morhabadi, Bariatu and Argora, faced acute power cuts from Friday night to Saturday evening with heavy rains and high-speed winds uprooting trees, causing faults in transformers and snapping electricity cables.

Residents of Pralhad Enclave, an apartment near the Ranchi Science Centre, had to suffer without electricity on the intervening night of Friday and Saturday. Power inverters also ran out of juice by Saturday afternoon and residents had no option but to wait for the electricity department to fix the faults.

“There has been no supply of electricity since Friday evening. Our inverters have also run out of power and we may have to stay in the dark if the problem is not resolved today (Saturday),” said Asha Kumari, a resident of the apartment.

Waterlogged streets in Ranchi after several hours of rain on Saturday. Sourced by correspondent

Officials from the Jharkhand Bijli Vitran Nigam (JBVNL) blamed the power cuts on “local faults”, claiming that the electricity department had surplus power for supply in Ranchi and there was no outage.

“Continuous rains have uprooted several trees in the city. When trees get uprooted, they often break electricity wires, causing disruption in supply. Most of the areas that suffered from power cuts had faults in local transformers and electricity supply systems,” said MP Yadav, the public relations officer of JBVNL.

As heavy rains continued to lash different parts of Jharkhand on Saturday, the electricity department failed to fix the faults in the supply system as engineers and other technical staff couldn’t reach the spots and fix the problems, JBVNL officials said. Some engineers, who tried to fix local glitches in the supply system, had to return without fixing the issues as the weather did not permit them to do their job.

Residents of Harihar Singh Road, which connects Morhabadi to Bariatu, had to deal with a power cut for more than five hours on Saturday morning. Power supply remained suspended till noon.

“We still had to deal with intermittent power cuts even after the supply was restored,” said Rajiv Shukla, a resident of Harihar Singh Road.

Not only did the continuous downpour affect electricity supply, but it also caused water-logging in many localities. Cars and bikes parked at a private parking lot of apartment complex Eklavya Tower on the Argora-Kathal More road were submerged in water after hours of rain. Pictures of the water-logged parking space went viral on social media with some residents claiming that the city has not seen such disastrous effects of rain in several decades while many claiming that the water-logging was a result of poor drainage.