For the contract and outsourcing staff of Uttar Pradesh's power department, climbing a pole to fix a fault has turned into a daily gamble with their lives. The record of the past seven weeks lays bare how hollow UPPCL's safety claims really are. In just 49 days, 56 major electrical accidents have been logged across the state. Of these, 30 outsourcing power workers have been electrocuted to death, while 26 others were burned so badly that many are now disabled for life. The situation has grown grave enough that the UPPCL Tender/Contract Workers' Union has announced a direct confrontation with management.
Union Pins the Blame Squarely on Management
The union's state general secretary, Devendra Pandey, issued a statement in Lucknow holding UPPCL management directly responsible for the deaths. According to him, both the official figures and the ground reality point to the same conclusion: the department is playing with the lives of its contract workers.
Pandey said that within this 49-day window, 56 major accidents took place, in which 30 outsourcing linemen and power staff lost their lives to electric current. During the same period, more than 26 workers suffered severe burns. The shock was so violent that several workers had to have their limbs amputated, leaving them permanently disabled.
Safety Reduced to a Formality
The union's biggest charge concerns safety equipment. Pandey said the contract workers operating in the field are not even provided with the basic, technical protection they need, such as gloves, safety belts or modern toolkits. That, he argued, is why every small lapse is turning straight into a fatal one.
1.5 Crore New Consumers, Yet 20,000 Workers Shown the Door
The administrative contradiction at the heart of this row is what stuns the most. On one side, Uttar Pradesh has added a record 1.5 crore (15 million) new electricity consumers over the recent period. On the other, UPPCL abruptly removed nearly 20,000 old and highly experienced contract workers from their jobs.
The result is that the workers who remain now carry a workload several times heavier. The rule states that a gang, or repair team, must have at least 4 skilled workers, but in the name of saving budget a single worker is sent up the pole alone. One person can only handle so much, which is precisely why the public across the state is also enduring a severe power crisis and unannounced cuts.
Untrained Hands Pushed onto High-Voltage Lines
Devendra Pandey leveled another serious allegation, saying that after pushing out experienced staff, management is now getting dangerous high-voltage line work done entirely by unskilled and unqualified labour. People with no experience in taking shutdowns, checking earthing or handling the finer points of the grid are being thrown straight into hazardous work. The union says this reckless negligence is why the death toll keeps climbing by the day, and it has branded the whole approach as management's dictatorship and an anti-worker policy.
The Ultimatum and the Threat to Surround Shakti Bhawan
The union has issued a blunt warning. It says that if UPPCL does not immediately end its dictatorial policies and recruit qualified, trained contract workers in proportion to the swelling number of consumers, then contract workers across Uttar Pradesh will stop work. According to the union, a historic, all-out mass agitation will soon be launched by laying siege to Lucknow's Shakti Bhawan, and the entire responsibility for it will rest with management.
