NEW DELHI: In a country that loses a quarter of its electricity to theft, Prime Minister Narendra Modi ’s parliamentary constituency — Varanasi — has shown a way out by pushing distribution cables underground and deploying technology to track illegal connections.Since work on overhauling the rickety distribution network began a year ago, power losses have dropped from 45% to below 10% in the Old Kashi area of the holy city, while the number of legal connections have jumped nearly 14% and improved the discom’s revenue collection.As work on underground cabling and removal of overhead supply lines progressed, consumers find tapping —a common practice in semi-urban India —nearly impossible. Tripping devices in the network have made it easier to detect illegal connections and identify the guilty. This is evident from over 100 FIRs filed for power theft.“This is the first time this kind of project has been done at such a scale in the country. It was challenging — from absence of distribution blueprints, narrow working window of 11p.m to 6 a.m in deference to Old Kashi’s status as a holy city, to cramped working space in lanes where had to ensure against disrupting people’s access and floods. We completed the task in time due to support from the Central and local administrations,” Power-Grid chairman I S Jha told TOI.The Central transmission utility was entrusted with the task of modernizing the rickety distribution network in a 16 Kmsq area, spanning an 8-km arch along Ganga and running two km into the city from its banks, under the Centre’s Integrated Power Development Scheme “The maze of wires and electric poles spoiling the view are gone. We had to lay 1,500 kms of underground cables and all stages of distribution strengthened. In case of a fault, only a cluster of 12 houses now face blackout and not the entire mohalla. Fixing faults is easier because of MCBs and MCCBs installed at transformer sites and substations. Tampering is quickly detected,” PowerGrid ’s Varanasi project manager Sudhakar Gupta told TOI.The main work of laying cables, adding distribution transformers for improved efficiency with smaller cluster of households, interlinking substations into a ring form and other technical upgrades have been completed in the entire scheme area, including all heritage sites. Only work on dismantling poles and shifting meters on outside walls of houses in some areas remain.