Gurugram, October 23 — Haryana is in the grip of a power sector standoff that has pitted the state's electricity department employees against the Haryana government and the state power regulator, with hundreds of thousands of homes and factories across the state facing disrupted electricity supply as a three-day statewide strike enters its second day.
The strike, which began on October 22, has been called by the All Haryana Power Corporation Workers Union alongside the Haryana Bijli Karamchari and Engineers Joint Sangharsh Morcha. Union leaders estimate that around 40,000 employees of the state's electricity utilities — line staff, engineers and administrative workers alike — have joined the protest.
Reports of outages and complaints of disrupted supply have surfaced from both residential colonies and industrial clusters across the state.
At the heart of the dispute is an order passed on October 19 by the Haryana Electricity Regulatory Commission, the state's power regulator. Invoking Section 14 of the Electricity Act, 2003, the Commission granted a parallel distribution licence to a private company, Eleven Power Private Limited, for a period of 25 years covering the Gurugram and Nuh revenue districts.
The licence would allow the private firm to distribute electricity in the same areas currently served by the state-owned Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam, effectively introducing a second, competing distribution utility in two of the most lucrative revenue districts in the state.
The order has infuriated the workforce. Across the state on Wednesday and Thursday, striking employees staged demonstrations in Hisar, Bhiwani, Kaithal, Pehowa and other towns, burning effigies of Union Power Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini and HERC chairman Mukesh Garg. Copies of the regulator's order were torn up at some protest sites and described by union leaders as a "black order".
Union representatives argue that the decision amounts to an indirect privatisation of power distribution in Haryana. Gurugram and Nuh, they point out, are high-revenue districts, and allowing a private operator into these territories would strip the state-owned Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam of its most profitable consumer base.
The fear, the unions say, is that this is only the first step: if the experiment succeeds, licences for other districts could follow, progressively hollowing out the public distribution companies.
The strike call has been near-total across the state's utilities. Field staff responsible for fault repair and maintenance joined the walkout, which has left consumers vulnerable to prolonged outages. The timing has sharpened the anxiety, with the festive season approaching and businesses and households keenly dependent on uninterrupted supply.
Industry associations in Gurugram, one of the country's largest industrial and commercial hubs, have watched the developments with concern, given the scale of commercial activity that depends on reliable power.
The Haryana government has moved quickly to contain the crisis. Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini has said that the state will challenge the HERC order before the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity, the appellate body for power sector disputes, within five to six days, and will seek a stay on the implementation of the licence.
The Chief Minister has also appealed to the unions to call off their strike and return to work, offering a striking concession: the government would be willing to have the legal case argued by lawyers of the employees' own choosing, in an effort to demonstrate that the state shares their concerns about the order.
Energy, transport and labour minister Anil Vij has taken an even harder line on the legal front, asserting that the government will pursue the battle all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. Vij has indicated that the state government believes the regulator's order is flawed and that it intends to defend the position of the state-owned utilities.
He also confirmed that the power department has moved to restrict leave for electricity staff during the strike period, signalling that the administration is preparing for a prolonged disruption if the standoff continues.
Officials have also sought to reassure consumers. The Chief Minister held a review meeting with administrative secretaries to ensure that essential services are protected during the strike and the festive season. The government has said that contingency arrangements are being put in place to keep critical infrastructure — hospitals, water supply systems and other essential services — running even as the regular workforce stays away.
Ordinarily, the law allows 45 days for an appeal against an order of the electricity regulatory commission. In this case, however, the state has directed its legal teams to complete the appeal paperwork within five to six days, an unusually compressed timeline that reflects the urgency of the situation. The government appears keen to secure a stay from the Appellate Tribunal before the private licence can take operational effect.
The legal questions at stake are significant. Section 14 of the Electricity Act, 2003 permits the grant of parallel distribution licences, and the central government's policy framework has long encouraged competition in electricity distribution as a way to improve service quality. But the unions and the state government argue that in this instance the licence was granted in a manner that unfairly disadvantages the incumbent public utility.
How the Appellate Tribunal views that argument could set an important precedent, not just for Haryana but for other states where private distribution is being considered.
Eleven Power Private Limited, the beneficiary of the licence, has said little publicly about the controversy. The company's 25-year licence for Gurugram and Nuh represents one of the largest private distribution forays in recent years, and its entry — if it survives legal challenge — could reshape the economics of power distribution in the National Capital Region's southern flank.
For the employees, though, the issue is existential. Union leaders have argued that the financial viability of the state utilities depends on the revenue from high-paying industrial and commercial consumers in districts like Gurugram. If those consumers migrate to a private distributor, the public utility would be left serving predominantly lower-revenue rural and agricultural consumers while still bearing the costs of its workforce and infrastructure.
This, they contend, is a recipe for the gradual financial collapse of the state companies.
The dispute also has a political dimension. Manohar Lal Khattar, whose effigy was burnt alongside the Chief Minister's, is a former Haryana chief minister and now the Union Power Minister — a dual role that the protesters appear to have connected to the regulator's decision.
The imagery of the protests, with effigies of the Union minister, the Chief Minister and the regulator's chairman burnt in public squares, suggests that the unions view the order not as a mere regulatory decision but as a politically driven policy move.
As the strike enters its final scheduled day, the question is whether the government's legal assurances will be enough to bring the workforce back. The unions have said they want the order scrapped, not merely stayed, and past experience in the power sector suggests that temporary stays can take years to resolve into final judgments.
The Chief Minister's offer to let the employees' own lawyers argue the case is an unusual gesture of solidarity, but whether it translates into an end to the strike remains to be seen.
Consumers, meanwhile, are caught in the middle. With around 40,000 employees off the job and the festive season demand rising, even brief outages can have outsized effects on homes and businesses. The coming days — the tribunal appeal, the government's contingency plans and the unions' next move — will determine whether Haryana's power crisis is a short, sharp confrontation or the beginning of a longer battle over who gets to sell electricity in the state.
(Reporting based on The Times of India, The Tribune and Hindustan Times.)