Probe ordered as Mumbai grapples without power for hours

A major power breakdown owing to a grid failure brought bustling Mumbai and parts of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region of Thane, Raigad and Palghar districts to its knees on Monday, officials said here.

Rattled by the backlash over the outage, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Energy Minister Nitin Raut ordered a high-level probe into the incident, even as supply limped back to normalcy by 2:00 pm.

Raut said that some regular maintenance work was going on at the 400KV lines at Kalwa, Thane.

"All the load had been shifted to the other circuit which faced some technical issues and broke down, hitting power supply to large parts of Mumbai-Thane. Work is underway on a war footing to restore power," Raut assured in a statement.

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Even as angry Mumbaikars vented their ire on social media, Thackeray spoke with Raut and later summoned an emergency meeting of high-level officials including MoS Energy Prasad Tanpure to discuss the power breakdown which left the country's commercial capital crippled for several hours.

One of the Mumbai distributors, BEST said the power supply was "interrupted due to TATA's incoming electric supply failure" at around 10:15 am.

A woman and her daughter light a candle inside their house after a power outage in Mumbai, India. Reuters

The power breakdown hit the lifelines of Mumbai - Central Railway and Western Railway - with all local trains halting en route till Vasai and Diva.

Hapless commuters at many locations jumped down and started walking down to the nearest suburban railway station as trains remained suspended between Churchgate-Borivali and CSMT-Thane during the power breakdown period.

Since power supply from MSETCL was available at Vasai Road the WR managed to operate essential suburban trains on the Borivali-Virar sector, said spokesperson Sumit Thakur.

A couple of hours later by 12:30 pm, spokespersons of both CR and WR announced that services had resumed and would soon be back to normal operations.

The power breakdown hit the lifelines of Mumbai with all local trains halting en route till Vasai and Diva. File photo

A BMC spokesperson said the power outage was due to the Central Grid failure of the Tata Power at Kalwa, Thane, and restoration could take around an hour.

All operations at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport were normal, said a spokesperson for Mumbai International Airport Ltd.

"The Bombay Stock Exchange is functioning normally. The listing ceremony was concluded successfully for Mazagon Shipbuilders this morning," a BSE spokesperson told IANS.

The power failure had other repercussions like hitting water supply schedules, lifts getting stuck in some buildings, malfunctioning traffic signals leading to chaos on roads, among others.

Indo-Asian News Service