Bengaluru's power cuts are back on the calendar, and BESCOM is calling them preventive

Bengaluru began January with the power cuts it has learned to schedule around. The pattern is now so familiar that it is worth describing precisely rather than as a complaint: a substation, a daytime window, a list of localities that appears in advance, and a helpline number. The January 21 shutdown was declared for the 66/11 kV Banaswadi substation, where BESCOM said maintenance and emergency works were required, with supply to be cut from around 10am and restored by evening depending on how quickly the work finished.

• Window: 10am to 6pm on January 21, 2026, an eight-hour daytime shutdown.
• More than 100 localities affected, concentrated in east, north, central and south-east Bengaluru.
• Named areas include HRBR Layout, Kammanahalli Main Road, CMR Road, Hennuru, OMBR Layout, Kasturi Nagar, Ramamurthy Nagar Main Road, B Channasandra and Rajkumar Park.
• BESCOM's advice: charge essential devices, plan work-from-home schedules, use power backup where available, and exercise caution when restoring supply.

Why before summer

The reason a single substation dominates the January list is that the work is deferred until it can be done in daylight. The Hindu reported that outages on the city's outskirts on January 17 and 18 were scheduled for replacement of the existing 66 kV Sarjapura-Attibele single-circuit coyote line with high temperature low sag conductors, and for stringing a second circuit on the same route, alongside work at the Attibele, Samanduru, Anekal and Chandapura substations. Industrial loads were being moved to night hours so that daytime work could proceed.

The density of the January calendar is the part that residents notice. BESCOM notices published on January 6 covered feeder maintenance in Tumkur on January 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 and 16, emergency repairs in Davangere, and link line work in Katsandra between January 5 and 8. A further alert covered intermittent outages across Tumkur through January 27 and a third-quarter maintenance shutdown at the 220 kV receiving centre in Kolar on January 25. None of it is unscheduled, and all of it adds up.