Power outage in parts of Mahim inconveniences residents on sultry afternoon in Mumbai

Mumbai: Mahim residents endured a sweltering Wednesday afternoon without electricity after a cable was damaged during road work, triggering a power cut in parts of the neighbourhood even as temperatures touched 35 degrees.The outage affected Mahim (West), including stretches along Lady Jamshedji Road, said residents. Supply was restored around 2.30pm, with the disruption lasting for over 1.5 hours.
"With the heat and humidity peaking, many households reported difficulty managing without fans and air conditioners, while senior citizens and children were among those most inconvenienced," said a resident who registered a complaint with the BEST. Officials from BEST were unavailable for comment.The interruption also hit people working from home, several of whom rely on local internet lines and routers that shut down when power goes off, said a local activist. Residents said mobile data networks were patchy in some pockets, compounding the disruption to online meetings and office work.On the other hand, the incident comes amid a spike in electricity consumption across the city. Peak power demand in Mumbai rose to around 3,200MW as sultry weather pushed up the use of cooling appliances, said officials.This was the second such disruption in less than a week. A few days earlier, several parts of the western suburbs from Bandra to Goregaon faced outages that lasted nearly 2 hours, prompting complaints about repeated interruptions during peak summer conditions.Separately, Mahim residents also flagged civic safety concerns linked to poor lighting. In a recent letter to the govt, locals sought urgent intervention over non-functional street lights at Mahim Causeway and the stretch from Kalanagar towards Mahim.They said most lamps in these areas remained defunct for days, leaving key roads in darkness and creating hardship for pedestrians and motorists. Residents warned that poorly lit roads increase the risk of accidents and crime, and demanded immediate repairs and better coordination between agencies to prevent repeated disruptions to essential services.