Life goes on at malls after power cut

A short blink in power supply at 10 pm is all that happened at Select City Walk in Saket on Monday, as the power backup generators started roaring to bring back life and glitter to the commercial hub that was one of the dozens of malls whose electricity was snapped by the power utility.

Little or virtually nothing changed in the lives of visitors and shop owners at the busy mall in south Delhi on the first day of forced power cut after 10 pm ordered by Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung in order to keep peak power demand in the city under check.

“The lobby and the common indoor areas are still cool, it doesn’t really feel as if there is a power cut,” said Sanjay, a beach slipper vendor in the mall.

A mall employee said that except for the air-conditioning at his desk on the ground floor and the switching off of the air conditioner  in the common lobby area, there seemed to be no major difference from Sunday, when there was no forced power cut in malls.

The high mast lights in the lawns of the mall were glittering as usual, cine-goers walked into the mall premises for their usual dose of entertainment and life seemed to go on as usual, despite almost the entire area running on power backup.

Usual day

The scene was no different at V3S Mall in Laxmi Nagar in east Delhi.

The eateries on the third floor closed down at around 10 pm and security guards  posted there said that was the usual drill on days even without these new forced power cuts.

Kartik Jha, a government employee who had come to the mall for eating out, approved of the power cut decison  but added, “It should not cause inconvenience to people.”

A private power distribution company official confirmed that power supply to malls was cut at 10 pm.

“We followed the LG’s direction strictly,” he said, expressing inability to give a figure on the number of malls that faced action and the amount of energy units saved by the force power cut.  

He added Jung virtually formalised a strategy of cutting power supply to malls that they adopted frequently to manage peak load.

“We had been cutting supply of malls earlier also,” he said.