NEW DELHI, 6 May 2006 — India’s capital city yesterday announced power rationing as summer temperatures soared above 40 degrees Celsius. On Monday, large parts of the city remained without power for up to eight hours. Shops in Delhi will have to shut an extra day a week, industrial units will be shut down in the evenings and billboards will not be allowed to use power, according to draft guidelines, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

Residents will also be asked not to turn on air-conditioners until after 9 p.m. in a city where day temperatures average 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) for over a month in the summer.

“The Delhi government is bringing it (the new rules) out and it will be binding on everyone once it is approved,” a senior official at the city’s state-run power utility Delhi Transco said.

Despite the country being a nuclear power, its capital city remains power-starved. Fed up with the yearly problem, the residents have approached the courts.

Acting on a petition, the Supreme Court yesterday asked the city and central governments to explain within two weeks what steps they would take to improve the power situation in the city, which will host the Commonwealth Games in 2010.

“How will we organize the Commonwealth Games in the year 2010 here?” the court asked. Officials warned after Monday’s blackout that the city of 14 million people faced a long hot summer due to severe power shortages.

Critics of the city government said this week’s power blackout, caused by a transformer fire, was symptomatic of a capital that they say is on the verge of administrative breakdown, plagued by massive electricity and water shortfalls.

Power experts blame the electricity shortfall on failure to add sufficient generation capacity as the city’s power needs have grown.

The court observed that Delhi did not have adequate power because it was exporting power.

It was also noted that handing over distribution of power to private companies had not been of much help in controlling the power crisis, which is also partly due to electricity theft and distribution losses. On this, senior counsel for power distribution companies Aryam Sundaram said that his clients were supplying only what was being made available to them by Delhi Transco.

Supply of power has not registered any increase over the past five years. The national Association of Industries and Commerce (ASSOCHAM) warned of darker days ahead, saying as many as 47 key power plants in India were “running much behind schedules to expand their generation capacity.” “By the end of fiscal 2006-2007, the capacity addition of only 10,000 megawatts will be done, thus falling short of the target by 8,000 megawatts,” Assocham Secretary-General D.S. Rawat said, warning the shortage would hit the economy.