The country that used to bear the brunt of loadshedding up to 18 hours daily until a year ago suddenly saw a drastic change under the leadership of then Energy Minister Janardan Sharma and incumbent Nepal Electricity Authority Chief Kul Man Ghising.

The end of loadsheeding has brought a great respite to Nepalis. People are now able to celebrate Tihar festival—the festival of lights, without having to worry when there will be power outage.

In this periphery, then Energy Minister Sharma on Friday wrote an account of his struggle to end the perennial problem of Nepal in his Facebook.

 Sharma said that when he was assigned Energy Ministry in the then Puspha Kamal Dahal’s Cabinet, he was worried from the first day whether he would be able to resolve the problem of loadshedding.

Within few weeks of becoming the minister, Sharma vowed to end loadshedding through his commitment paper. He said in his Facebook post that his commitment drew severe criticisms instead of supports as no Nepali was willing to believe that loadshedding would end in Nepal. He wrote that people took his commitment as his a ‘populist strategy’ and a reiteration of what his predecessors said. Some even said that this was again a politician’s ploy to mislead public, Sharma said in his Facebook.

Sharma writes it was a huge challenge for him to establish his commitment into deeds. He recalls how his decision to appoint honest people like Anup Upadhyay as Energy Secretary and Kul Man Ghising as NEA Managing Director was a perfect decision.

“Tihar, the festival of lights, should be glittering,” Kulman recalls what he had thought after assuming the ministry, “A technical committee was formed, and within 15 days of study we formulated a strategy to end the loadshedding for Tihar. The end of loadshedding was done on the day of Laxmi Puja, one of the prominent days of five-day-long Tihar festival. The loadshedding-free routine was carved out till Chhath festival.”

“Our hard work yielded success. We were able to reduce industrial loadshedding to four hours from 12 hours while households were provided with uninterruptible electricity supply,” Sharma writes in his Facebook.

The loadshedding that was ended despite many technical hurdles has reached one year today, he said.

Sharma expressed his gratitude to then PM and his party CPN (Maoist Centre)’s Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal for assigning him the Energy Ministry. He also thanked Secretary Upadhyay and NEA Chief Ghising, among all technical team, for their support in his mission.

Minister Sharma, who was assigned Home Minister by current Sher Bahadur Deuba’s government, has now been left as minister without portfolio.