Vellore Consumer Federation president M Sathyiamoorthy said, “we usually pick on EB for their lapses, but for once they measured up to more than our expectations when they restored power in spite of staff shortage.”

Echoing his view, former State Bank official Prabhakaran said, “because of the intensity of the cyclone we were ready to wait for quite a long time to get power back and hence we were surprised when normality was restored in such a short time.” Retired law officer B Sudarsanam told DT Next, “Vellore is always known for lackadaisical performance by EB. So it was quite surprising that they belied our expectations.”

Asked about being lauded by the public for exceptional work during an emergency, TNEB Vellore East (Operation and Maintenance) AE P Suresh said, “we knew we had to work hard because we had to restore 12,000 plus connections. Also we had to replace fallen poles and totally damaged poles.” Asked about the staff he said, “the office has only four field staff and two supervisors, but they more than made up by going all out to restore connections. All of us have deep sense of satisfaction on a job well done which has been appreciated by the public.”