Varanasi is one of the world's oldest cities and is set to go absolutely modern with electricity as it prepares to go completely wireless. In 2015, Piyush Goyal the former Union minister of state for power and coal had announced Rs. 432-crore project for underground cabling work for over 16 square kilometers, catering to 50,000 consumers. So currently the overhead power cables are dismantled. The project was done by Powergrid, a state-owned company conducting the Integrated Power Development Scheme (IPDS).

Laying cables through lanes and congested markets was quiet a challenge but has been successfully completed. “Demographics-wise Seoul and some Turkish cities on the riverfront were considered complicated. While implementing IPDS in Varanasi, we realised this is the most complicated city to lay infrastructure for underground cables,” said Powergrid’s project manager for IPDS Varanasi, Sudhakar Gupta in a report to Times of India. The work started in 2015 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched this project in September. It was completed in 2 years. The project was finished in December 2017.

Goyal used to regularly visit and monitor the project. “Major differences were found in the actual requirement and proposal in the detailed project report,” a Powergrid official said. In the narrow lanes, small pedestal boxes for the switches had to be installed. For this project, 11 old substations were modernised and two new ones were built at Chowk and Kazzakpura areas. The company also had to counter the challenge of the existing lines for sewage, water supply, BSNL wires. Several times these lines got damaged too and a compensation had to be made to the concerned authorities.

The pilot project of this was rolled out in Kabir Nagar and Ansarabad in 2015 after which the project was effectively monitored. The underground cables have reduced the line and revenue losses too. Line loss in the area covered by IPDS has come down to 9.9% from 42.7%, while consumer complaints have dropped as well, informed Atul Nigam, managing director of Purvanchal Vidyut Vitran Nigam Limited in the same report. So no more will you see the sight of wires congesting the bylanes in Varanasi.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 25, 2018 05:47 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).