Free electricity to three wards of disaster hit areas of Wayanad for 6 months: Kerala power minister

Wayanad: State Electricity Minister K Krishnankutty on Tuesday directed the KSEB to provide free power for six months in the three landslides-hit wards of Meppadi panchayat.

The 1,139 customers who would benefit from this will also not have to pay their outstanding dues, if any, the minister said.

Besides that, Krishnankutty said that the Kerala State Electricity Board's (KSEB) ability to restore power in Chooralmala area, which was isolated following the landslides, helped in the rescue operations.

It was an arduous task to restore power lines that were broken by heavy winds and torrential rains, he said.

"There are 19,000 connections under the KSEB Meppadi section. Out of these, there were 385 household connections and 70 commercial connections in the Mundakkai-Chooralmala disaster areas." These were completely broken, electricity poles and transformers were all destroyed and the damage was estimated to be more than Rs 3 crore, he said.