While power department officials had said on Friday, after the strike was called off, that they expected the situation to start normalising within the next 24 hours, power plants remained shut due to gas shortage on Saturday.

The gas turbine plant is still not generating any power, and two 110 MW units of the Pragati plant are still shut. “We have just started receiving gas supply, so the plants should be up and running in a few hours. When a power plant is shut down, it takes a few hours to restart,” a senior Delhi Transco official said.

Sources at the power department, however, said the gas supply was still erratic and Delhiites may have to wait till Monday for the situation to ease off. “Fortunately, the peak demand is less since it’s a weekend and most offices are closed. We expect that most plants will be fully operational by Monday,” the Transco official said.

Elsewhere, a 200 MW unit at the Badarpur thermal plant had to be shut down due to “technical problems”. With peak hour demand at 3,083 MW, Delhi had to overdraw in excess of 200 MW from the Northern Grid, in order to avoid wide-scale blackouts.