Power outages in parts of Dadar, Parel and Bandra; residents inconvenienced

Mumbai: Mumbai’s recurring power outages are emerging as a serious civic concern, with residents across several neighbourhoods facing prolonged disruptions in the middle of intense heat and humidity. The latest incidents in Dadar, Parel, and Bandra on Thursday have once again exposed the growing strain on the city’s electricity distribution network, even as peak demand remained high between 4,300 MW and 4,540 MW (May 11) this week.

On Thursday morning, parts of Dadar were without electricity for more than 1.5 hours, leaving households to cope without fans, lifts, and in many cases, reliable water supply. BEST officials said power was restored on priority and attributed the disruption to a “critical load condition due to 33KV feeder fault of Sitladevi receiving substation”.

While technical teams moved to restore supply, residents said the outage caused severe inconvenience during the morning rush. At one location in Dadar, a citizen said there were intermittent power cuts for nearly nine hours.

Parts of Bandra faced a power outage for nearly five hours.

In Parel, the situation was equally distressing. Residents reported that power supply failed shortly after 9pm on Wednesday and was restored around midnight, only to go off again in the early hours. One resident said the electricity was out again around 3.30am, leaving families without fans and air-conditioning, and turning the night into an exhausting ordeal.

These incidents are not isolated. Similar complaints have recently come in from Antop Hill, few days back where residents faced prolonged outages for the second time in a week, and from Vile Parle West, where interruptions were also reported. Across areas served by BEST, Adani Electricity and Tata Power, outages in recent days have ranged from three to 12 hours.

Utilities have pointed to cable faults, feeder failures and transformer tripping as the main reasons. But for citizens, the consequences are immediate and disruptive. Power cuts halt water pumps, stall lifts, interrupt work-from-home schedules and leave phones and essential devices without charge. In a city that depends on uninterrupted electricity for daily life, repeated outages are more than an inconvenience.

Mumbai’s peak power demand on Wednesday and Thursday hovered between 4,300 MW and 4,400 MW, underlining the pressure on the system. With demand rising and outages recurring with worrying frequency, residents are increasingly demanding not just quick restoration, but accountability, better maintenance and a stronger, more resilient power infrastructure.