Kerala power cuts put Satheesan government under pressure

A week of prolonged night-time power cuts has emerged as the first major political challenge for Kerala Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan's Congress-led government, giving the Left fresh ammunition while triggering scrutiny over power shortages, demand, procurement and previous policy decisions

Thiruvananthapuram: For nearly a decade, power cuts had largely vanished from Kerala’s political discourse, depriving the Opposition of a potent issue to target the government. But a week of prolonged night-time outages has abruptly altered the landscape, placing the Congress-led government of Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan under its first serious political pressure.

The Congress government, which assumed office in May, had until now managed to avoid controversies capable of significantly denting its political standing. The power crisis, however, has emerged as a major challenge, bringing both the government and Power Minister Sunny Joseph under intense public scrutiny.

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Television channels have been flooded with complaints from consumers, many of whom say they have not experienced such frequent power disruptions in the past decade. The public discontent has provided fresh momentum to the Left’s social media ecosystem, which has been quick to highlight the outages through memes, posts and comparisons with the previous LDF administration led by Pinarayi Vijayan.

The irony has not gone unnoticed. Left-leaning social media handles had been attempting to corner the new government ever since it took office but struggled to find an issue that resonated widely. The power cuts have now handed them precisely the opportunity they were looking for.

The Satheesan government and Joseph have sought to attribute the crisis to decisions taken during the previous LDF regime, particularly the cancellation of a power purchase agreement initiated under the Oommen Chandy government. Critics, however, have countered that Kerala did not witness such outages when the Vijayan government demitted office in April, raising questions about the timing of the crisis.

Seeking to project a long-term solution, Joseph on Saturday said the government was considering an attractive tariff mechanism for households willing to feed stored electricity back to the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB). The government is also examining community battery systems linked to solar power and subsidies for households installing their own storage facilities.

According to the minister, electricity demand has increased by around 1,000 MW, driven partly by the growing adoption of electric vehicles, while coal shortages have further aggravated the situation. Kerala currently generates only about 25 per cent of its power requirement, and delays in launching new power projects have compounded the challenge.

Adding a sharper political edge to the debate, former Power Minister M.M. Mani alleged that the government could be exaggerating the crisis ahead of purchasing expensive power from external sources, hinting at possible vested interests in such deals. Meanwhile, the dominant Left narrative on social media remains straightforward: had Vijayan remained in office, Kerala would not have faced the current situation.

For Satheesan, the issue has rapidly evolved from a power-sector concern into the first significant political storm confronting his government, one that the Opposition appears determined to exploit to the fullest.