In a striking scene at Singha Durbar on Friday, lawmakers sat close together, their faces lit only by the glow of mobile phone flashlights, as they continued a parliamentary subcommittee meeting despite repeated power outages.

The photo shared by Rastriya Swatantra Party lawmaker Sumana Shrestha’s secretariat showed members of the Education, Health, and Information Technology Committee of the House of Representatives working in near darkness.

“A subcommittee on education is meeting under phone lights right now,” the post read, highlighting the unusual sight of parliamentarians using their phones to illuminate documents and continue discussions on the School Education Bill.

The session was repeatedly disrupted by ongoing power cuts that have affected various parts of the country, including the Kathmandu Valley, since Thursday. The recurring outages have drawn sharp public criticism, with citizens blaming Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, Energy Minister Dipak Khadka, and Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) head Hitendra Dev Shakya for failing to ensure a stable power supply.

Many have accused Shakya, newly appointed managing director of the NEA, of failing to manage the power supply efficiently.

Nepal had largely ended years of load-shedding by 2017, but the recent blackouts have raised concerns about the country’s power infrastructure, even disrupting work at key government administrative complexes such as Singha Durbar.