Not following basic safety measures while carrying out essential services like power repairs is not just negligence — it is a crime. Yet, this crime continues to be committed in broad daylight by the very department entrusted with ensuring the safety of its frontline workers.
The tragic death of Mahendra Singh, a lineman with 25 years of service, while repairing a transformer in Jammu’s Talab Tillo, is another painful reminder of how little the lives of ground-level workers seem to matter to the system.
Despite witnessing the deaths of over 120 linemen in similar incidents, the Power Development Department has failed — repeatedly and shamefully — to implement or enforce meaningful safety protocols. No shutdown procedures, no proper safety gear, no standard supervision — just a man on a pole, risking his life to restore power, and paying for it with his life.
Mahendra Singh didn’t die because of an accident. He died because of a system that continues to send its workers into the field unequipped and unprotected. When a lineman climbs a pole without knowing if current is flowing, when he lacks a safety harness or gloves, when there is no accountability from engineers or supervisors — the responsibility for his death lies squarely on the department.
How long will these so-called emergency repairs be carried out at the cost of human lives? How many more families must lose loved ones before safety is treated as non-negotiable?
The bitter truth is that those in air-conditioned offices, signing duty rosters, rarely care about ground reality. Line staff are treated as disposable — sent to fix faults at odd hours, often alone, without supervision or safety assurance. When one dies, the department expresses “deep regret,” visits the family, maybe offers compensation — and moves on.
What’s needed is structural change — strict protocols, mandatory shutdowns, regular safety audits, and accountability at the top. Until then, every such death is not an accident — it is institutional murder.
Enough is enough. The department must be held answerable — not just to Mahendra Singh’s family, but to every citizen who believes in a system that should value human life. Strong administrative and legal action is needed. Otherwise, every condolence message from the authorities will ring hollow.
Because if over 120 deaths haven’t woken up the system — what will?
