Blackout affects 22 states after 3 major grids fail
Half of India yesterday went without electricity as three power grids serving Northern, Eastern and North-Eastern regions failed, crippling normal life across 22 states.
The blackout comes a day after a mass outage left eight states without power for much of the day.
The federal Indian government blamed overdrawal of power by states in eastern region for yesterday’s grid collapse.
As the grids collapsed at around 1:00 pm, miners in Eastern Coalfields got trapped in Sodepur and Satgram in Burdwan districts of West Bengal, according to officials of state-owned Coal India Ltd who said rescue efforts are on.
State-owned Eastern Coal Ltd sources said the miners who went into the mines in the first shift were stuck when the grid collapsed.
“They were not trapped, but were safe at the pit bottom,” the sources said.
This is perhaps for the first time that three power grids collapsed on the same day.
In New Delhi, Metro commuters were trapped inside the tunnels for sometime as trains came to a halt as electricity supplies got stopped.
Power Grid Corporation promised normalcy would be restored by this evening.
The states affected by the power crisis covering about 642 million of India’s 1.2 billion population included Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, West Bengal, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Odisha, Bihar, Rajasthan and Assam and federally-administered territory of Chandigarh.
In Kolkata, Metro rail services were unaffected, according to state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. The state government declared holiday in its offices after 3:00 pm.
The railways network across major parts of the country was among the worst hit services, as trains, other than those running on diesel engine, stopped midway.
Three hundred trains came to a grinding halt at various places yesterday afternoon due to failure. Train services from Monday’s power failure had barely been restored when the railways was once again been hit by another power tripping yesterday, a railway spokesperson said.
Northeastern state of Assam witnessed large-scale power cuts and in Orissa also, train services were hit.
The Northern Indian Power Grid, which had collapsed Monday and was restored after 15 hours, again tripped yesterday. The Eastern Indian and North-Eastern Indian transmission lines too failed yesterday afternoon, worsening the power situation in the country when it is facing a drought-like situation in most parts due to deficient monsoon.
Power Grid Corporation chief R N Nayak said, “Some sections are creating problems by overdrawing power.”
-With The Daily Star input
