Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh government on Thursday (July 11) said that "flying bats" have been causing faults in power supply lines in a locality of the state capital Bhopal.

Minister for energy Priyavrat Singh said this in the Assembly in reply to a question about power cuts asked by BJP’s Yashpal Sisodiya.

During the discussion, Leader of Opposition Gopal Bhargava of the BJP asked the minister to clarify his previous statement that "flying bats have been causing power tripping".

The minister asked Bhargava not to link the problem of "bats causing faults in power lines" with the entire state as this was confined just to one locality in Bhopal.

Singh further said these flying mammals were causing faults in supply lines only in an area under Bhopal north zone located near the Upper Lake. The minister said he had told officials concerned to repair the supply lines by insulating them.

Singh also claimed instances of power tripping have reduced in the state if compared to the situation under the previous BJP government.

The issue had come into limelight when an official of a state-run power company, during a meeting on June 14, had claimed flying bats were creating faults in electricity supply lines along the Upper Lake in Bhopal.

The official had claimed bats hanging on power supply lines sometimes cause short circuits, which ultimately lead to outages.

The statement of flying bats causing power cuts comes just days after Tanaji Sawant, Maharashtra water conservation minister, said that the Tiware dam breach took place because of crabs.

"There is a huge problem of crabs around the dam and that resulted in the leakage. Whatever problems were brought to the notice by the villagers to our irrigation department were addressed immediately. But whatever happened was unfortunate," stated Sawant.

The death toll in the Tiware dam breach incident in Maharashtra's coastal Ratnagiri district rose to 18.

Following the incident, angry NCP workers in Pune dumped a carton full of crabs at Sawant’s doorstep.