Dark homes, dry taps, idle factories: Gurgaon hit by 16-hour power cuts amid strike

GURGAON: Thousands of households went without electricity and water, nearly 1,800 manufacturing units faced disruption, and residents took to the streets as a three-day strike by Haryana's electricity department employees crippled power supply across Gurgaon on Thursday.With breakdown complaints going unattended, inverters running out of charge and industrial units struggling to keep production lines operational, the disruption exposed the city's dependence on an uninterrupted electricity supply for even its most basic needs.The strike, called to protest the Haryana Electricity Regulatory Commission's (HERC) decision to grant a parallel electricity distribution licence to private company Eleven Power for Gurgaon and Nuh, began affecting supplies from Wednesday night.By Thursday, power cuts had spread across residential colonies, industrial clusters and rural areas, with residents complaining that repeated calls to electricity officials and helplines had failed to bring relief.In several localities, prolonged outages also hit water supply as electricity-dependent boosting stations and household motors stopped…