Minister for Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation Biraj Bhakta Shrestha has directed the bodies under his ministry to ensure an uninterrupted supply of electricity during the festive season, with a clear instruction that there should be no power outages during Tihar, the festival of lights. Issued as households and businesses across Nepal prepare for the celebrations, the directive also tells the ministry's subordinate bodies to prioritise advance preparation and planned work for managing the power supply in the dry season that follows the festivals. In effect, the minister has set two tasks at once: keep the lights on through Tihar, and ready the system for the harder months that come after.

A festival-time order to keep the lights on

According to reports by Nagarik News, Gorkhapatra Online and RatoPati, the minister issued the directive to the various bodies working under the Ministry of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation, the institutions that operate and manage the country's electricity services. The instruction places festival-time reliability at the centre of their immediate responsibilities and makes Tihar the visible deadline by which their preparations will be judged.

The directive, as summarised in the reports, covers the following points:

  • An uninterrupted electricity supply is to be ensured throughout the festive season, with no power outages during Tihar.
  • Electricity demand and supply during the festival period are to be forecast and analysed.
  • The necessary arrangements are to be made on the basis of that analysis, including arrangements for Tihar.
  • Advance preparation and planned work are to be prioritised for managing the power supply in the dry season that follows the festivals.

The emphasis on Tihar reflects the nature of the festival itself. Celebrated as the festival of lights, Tihar sees homes, shops and public spaces across Nepal decorated with oil lamps, candles and strings of electric lights, and evening electricity consumption climbs accordingly. An outage on a festival night would be felt in every neighbourhood at once, which is why the minister has chosen to make supply during this specific period a matter of direct instruction rather than routine expectation.

Forecasting demand before the lamps are lit

The first working instruction in the directive concerns forecasting. The subordinate bodies have been asked to forecast and analyse electricity demand and supply during the festival period and to arrange the system accordingly, including for Tihar. Read closely, this shifts the burden onto preparation: the demand that arrives with festival lighting is predictable, and the bodies under the ministry are expected to have studied it, quantified it and matched it with supply before the first lamps are lit.

For consumers, the practical meaning is that the ministry wants arrangements made in advance, not improvised. The directive treats festival-time demand as a known quantity to be planned for, and places responsibility with the bodies that manage the power system if gaps appear despite that planning.

Advance analysis also serves the second purpose of the directive. Understanding how demand behaves during the festivals gives the ministry and its bodies a clearer picture of the consumption patterns they will face once the celebrations end, informing the planned work they have been told to prioritise for the dry season.

Looking past the festivals to the dry season

The second half of the directive looks beyond the festivals altogether. Minister Shrestha instructed the subordinate bodies to prioritise advance preparation and planned work for managing the power supply in the dry season that follows, a period widely recognised as the most demanding stretch of the year for Nepal's power system.

Nepal generates most of its electricity from hydropower, and a large share of that comes from run-of-river plants whose output depends on how much water is flowing in the rivers. After the monsoon ends and the country moves toward winter, river flows gradually recede and generation falls with them, even as households use more electricity for lighting during longer evenings and for heating as temperatures drop. The dry season is therefore when the pressure on the system is greatest, and when any shortfall in planning shows up most quickly as supply problems for consumers.

By calling for planned work rather than reactive fixes, the minister's instruction signals that the bodies under the ministry are expected to use the festive weeks to organise their dry-season readiness, carrying out the necessary preparation before the season arrives rather than responding to problems after they occur.

A public benchmark for the bodies under the ministry

For consumers, the directive carries a straightforward assurance: festival-time supply has been placed on record as a priority at the highest level of the ministry, and the bodies under it are now responsible for delivering it. Because Tihar is a festival of lights, the success or failure of that delivery will be unusually easy to judge, visible in the lamps and decorative bulbs of every street.

For the institutions concerned, the directive sets a measurable standard and a calendar. The festivals provide the immediate test, and the dry season that follows provides the longer one. By binding both into a single instruction, Minister Shrestha has made it clear that the ministry expects preparation, planning and an uninterrupted supply, during Tihar and beyond.