Lucknow, Jan 10 (IANS): The power crisis in Uttar Pradesh deepened Saturday with a sharp increase in demand owing to the extreme cold weather conditions in most parts of the state.

Officials said that load shedding was taking place in many major cities of the state. The power outages varied from two to six hours in cities like Agra, Ghaziabad, Moradabad, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Bareilly, Kanpur and Etawah.

Even the parliamentary constituency of prime minister Narendra Modi has seen power cuts in the past 24-hours, officials said, though the VIP constituency is scheduled to get 24x7 power supply.

They said supply from the Modipuram control room has been poor in the past few hours which has led to power crisis in western Uttar Pradesh.

Due to cold weather conditions, the demand has risen to 240 million units while the supply aggregate was just 226 million units.

Faced with a shortage of 14 million units, the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited (UPPCL) has resorted to unscheduled power cuts, an official said.

Sources say that the demand of electricity in 11 districts of the 'potato belt' was at its peak and there was an increase of 500 MW demand for irrigation over the last few days.

The only good news is that units at Aanpara power plants run by Lanco have begun operations after a brief shut down. Unit 3 of Aanpara power plant has been running 210 MW short of its optimum while a 200 MW unit of Obra has shut down for technical reasons.