The death of three persons in Karnah area of north Kashmir’s Kupwara district due to electrocution is yet another tragic reminder of the callousness that has seeped into the state’s power development department, robbing hundreds of families of their bread earners and pushing them into state of impoverishment. While the incidents of electrocution have been occurring with eerie regularity in Jammu and Kashmir, and even the employees of the power development department, most of them daily wagers, have had to lose their lives, the authorities are not even pretending to wake up from their slumber and end this horror once and for all. In a retrospective study at the national level by a leading research group, it has been shown that there has been a 43 percent increase in death due to power shocks. Jammu and Kashmir is certainly not an exception but the tragedies that happen in our state are perhaps unique in their own way. Consider the latest incident in Karnah where a high tension power line fell on the supply line, leading to the death of three persons. It is obvious that there was no supernatural activity in the area that caused the high tension line to snap and fall on its own on the supply line. There must have been some kind of negligence at the official level that led to this tragedy. But it is because this negligence at the official level goes unpunished that these incidents of electrocution continue to occur. Take the example of daily wagers who have perished in the line of duty while making efforts to ensure that people get uninterrupted power supply. Hundreds if not thousands of PDD daily wagers have been killed in past three decades due to the negligence of seniors in power department. Even as they are on the job, somehow the power supply is restored, even as the repairs are yet to be finished, leading to their untimely and tragic death! Has the state government of the power department bothered to probe why these preventable tragedies have been occurring at regular intervals? Have those responsible for these cold blooded murders been punished? Has the accountability been fixed? The answer to these questions is a big no. It is precisely because there are no systems of checks and balances in place that innocent people continue to die. With the politics taking precedence over other matters, it is unlikely that the situation is going to change in coming months and years.