With Bihar’s craze for cricket clashing with darkness in the power-starved state amid growing agitations, the state’s MLAs have made the unprecedented demand for an early adjournment of the ongoing Assembly session and uninterrupted power supply on Wednesday to watch the India-Pakistan semi-final match in the World Cup.
While the Nitish Kumar-led government on Tuesday agreed, after a day’s hesitation, to make changes in the duration of the Assembly session, it could not promise uninterrupted power supply during the match hours across the state as demanded by several MLAs from both the ruling and Opposition parties. It is the first time Bihar’s Assembly had to change its timings so that legislators could enjoy a cricket match.
Speaker Uday Narayan Chaudhary announced that the Assembly session on Wednesday would start at 9 am and end at 1 pm — instead of the usual 11 am to 5 pm — to honour the MLAs’ desire for the crucial World Cup cricket match between two of the game’s biggest international rivals. Earlier, deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi had rebuffed the MLAs’ demand, saying: “Those MLAs keen on watching the match can stay away from the Assembly session.”
But the cricket-crazy MLAs, like millions of crazier cricket fans across Bihar, may find their spirits down on Wednesday due to the long hours of blackouts caused due to acute shortage of power the state has been suffering for the past five days.
Thousands of angry residents continued their agitation in Bhagalpur, Munger, Banka and Darbhanga on Tuesday demanding uninterrupted power supply. At the same time, people organised public prayers and processions in several towns for the Indian cricket team’s victory against Pakistan.
Hopes rose as Bihar, whose own power generation capability is negligible, got a slightly increased quantity of power — 925 MW from the central pool against the stipulated daily quota of 1,722 MW — on Tuesday.
“Let us see what is available tomorrow,” said Bihar State Electricity Board spokesman Hariom Pandey.