New Delhi (India), April 22: Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and Delhi Assembly Leader of Opposition Atishi has come down heavily on Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta over the recent power outages reported in several parts of the national capital amid soaring temperatures.
In a post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), Atishi criticized the CM for allegedly ignoring the plight of residents dealing with intense heat and long hours without electricity.
“Yesterday, the temperature in Delhi touched 40°C, and even at night, it hovered around 30°C. If the electricity goes out in such heat, imagine how difficult it must be,” she wrote.
Atishi claimed that multiple areas faced prolonged power cuts, while CM Rekha Gupta continued to deny the situation, allegedly dismissing reports by joking that people were voluntarily having “candlelight dinners.”
“I request Rekha Gupta—please don’t make fun of the people of Delhi,” she added, urging the CM to acknowledge and address the issue.
She further stressed that public complaints cannot be brushed aside, noting that her WhatsApp inbox is flooded daily with messages about power outages.
According to Atishi, areas affected on Monday included Sangam Vihar, Kamla Nagar, Uttam Nagar, Dwarka, Sonia Vihar, Bhogal, and Kotla Mubarakpur.
The power crisis comes amid a significant surge in electricity demand. On April 10, AAP national convenor and former Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal had also warned that the city’s power system was being “damaged” under the new government.
“In the last ten years, we worked hard to fix Delhi’s electricity system. It takes years to build, but only two days to break it,” Kejriwal said on X, criticizing the current administration’s handling of the power grid.
Kejriwal pointed out that while Delhi’s demand reached 8,500 MW last year under the AAP government without power cuts, the current administration is struggling to meet a demand of just 5,462 MW, resulting in outages across the city.