Bihar: Summers heat up with strikes, lathi charge and power breakdowns

, Sept 14: Following a strike by the power officials in

's capital, protesting the 'lathicharge' and the teargassing of a few of them in an earlier protest, Patna plunged into darkness for a harrowing 5 hours.

The city and the nearby areas did not have any electricity since Friday evening till late at night. They finally relented to the requests of the Bihar energy minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav who assured the release of the arrested employees.

"We were forced to proceed on strike in view of the police resorting to lathicharge and bursting teargas shells on peaceful demonstrators here on Bailey Road in front of Vidyut Bhavan," said B L Yadav, spokesman of the Power Engineering Service Association (Pesa), Bihar. He further added, "Dozens of our members were also taken into police custody." Following police action, we held an emergency meeting and decided to go for a lightning strike.

Pesa secretary Ashwini Kumar said,"We have not called off our strike, only deferred it. The final decision would be taken on Monday after the meeting with the minister."

Affected areas

Some of the major parts of the city had plunged into darkness since Friday 4:30 pm.

The affected areas were Boring road, North S K Puri, Patliputra Colony, east and west Boring Canal Road, parts of Rajendra Nagar, Kankarbagh, Bahadurpur Housing Colony, S K Memorial hall, Dak Bungalow road, Fraser road, Hathwa Market, New Patliputra Colony, Rajiv Nagar, Ashok Rajpath area, A G colony, S K Nagar, Buddha Colony, Gardanibagh and Yarpur, Gaya, Bhagalpur, Darbhanga, Muzaffarpur, Purnia, Saharsa, Madhepura, Begusarai and Biharsharif.

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