Superintending Engineer South Vishwanath Nayak said the agency was in the process of excavating a duct through horizontal drilling method for laying optical fibre cable when they damaged the power cable. “They left the place after abandoning the work around midnight,” he said.

A similar incident had occurred a few weeks back when a telecom company cut an underground cable in the night leading to a 9-hour long power cut in Rustambagh, a residential enclave beside Manipal Hospital on Old Airport Road.

A suspected cable cut by a popular telecom company led to several areas in the southern parts of the city going without power supply for more than 18 hours on Monday as officials struggled to find the fault and restore power.

Areas like BTM Layout, Arekere, Bannerghatta Road, JP Nagar and surrounding areas were affected since 1.45 a.m. when the underground cable leading from the 220 kV Somanahalli station was snapped at an unknown location. The station supplies power to three smaller 66kV stations which were affected.

“Local officials have told us that it is the fault of a telecom company. We are in the process of investigating. The problem with such cuts is that the exact location of the fault has to be located. We traced the underground line from Somanahalli station and finally discovered the cut near RBI Layout. Work has started on restoration,” a senior official with the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (Bescom) said. However, hopes of early restoration were dashed since the whole process involves digging through nearly 8 to 10 feet of ground avoiding cables set up by other civic utilities and then fixing the fault after isolating it. “The work is partially complete and we are working on it. It has affected supply to several areas in BTM Layout, Bannerghatta Road, RBI Layout and others,” the official said.

In the meantime, hapless consumers spent an entire day without power and with no hopes of relief any time soon. “It has been more than 18 hours now and there is still no power supply. Does it really take them that long to restore power,” questioned Siddartha Raval, a resident of Arekere.

According to the standards of performance set by the Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission, incidents of line breakdown in urban areas have to be restored in 6 hours or 10 hours if poles are broken. In case of defaults, the Escom would have to pay an amount of 50 rupees to each consumer.

Officials of the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited were on the lookout for more details on who cut the line. “Once we know who is responsible for this, we will file a complaint against them and take action,” an official said.