Civic councillors told mayor Firhad Hakim on Friday that they are encountering disgruntled voters complaining about power cuts, while accompanying Lok Sabha candidates on door-to-door campaign trail.

The councillors requested Hakim to take up the matter with CESC, Calcutta’s sole power supplier.

Many Calcuttans have complained about power cuts and voltage fluctuations in their neighbourhoods in the past few weeks, when the use of air-conditioners rose keeping pace with the soaring Celsius.

Friday’s complaints by councillors stem from an apprehension that the power cuts and frequent voltage fluctuations could have an impact on voting.

“I accompanied the Lok Sabha candidate from Jadavpur, Sayani Ghosh, to the home of a girl who has performed well in this year’s Madhyamik exams. There was no power in the area when we went there,” Bappaditya Dasgupta, the Trinamool Congress councillor of Ward 101 of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), later told Metro.

“Residents told us about the problems they faced because of frequent power cuts. At Friday’s meeting, we requested the mayor to take up the matter with CESC because power cuts also disrupt water supply.”

He said the pumps that are used to extract groundwater and supply the water to homes in his ward could not function at the optimum level for some durations last week because of voltage fluctuations.

“If power supply is impacted, water supply, too, gets impacted,” said Dasgupta.

A councillor from Kasba said the power cuts and voltage fluctuations “could impact the votes”.

A CESC official told this newspaper that unsanctioned load — people are installing air-conditioners in homes without informing CESC or upgrading their meters — was to be blamed for the power cuts.

“We have received applications for 34,000 new ACs between March 1 and April 15. Our calculations suggest that about 1.5 lakh new ACs were installed during this period. Nearly 80 per cent ACs were installed without any meter upgrade,” the CESC official said.

Avijit Ghosh, executive director (distribution), CESC, said an in-built protection mechanism leads to power cuts in the event of overloading in the system. “When many ACs are run in an area without the required meter upgrade, it can lead to overloading. The system will take its own protective measure, otherwise there will be much larger damage that will cause more suffering,” he said.