RailEnquiry

In the worst ever power crisis, over half of the country's population in 21 states went without electricity for hours today as three major transmission grids failed, bringing northern, eastern and north-eastern regions to a grinding halt.

According to reports, power has been restored to all the grids. An official says all grids – Northern, Easter and North-Eastern - now are running at 100% capacity.

The massive failure came less than 24 hours after the Northern Grid collapsed and was revived yesterday itself.

After 10 hours, 86 per cent supplies have resumed in the Northern region while in the Eastern region 79 per cent have been restored till 2330 hours, according to Power Grid.

Today, the worst sufferers were 265 miners who got trapped in coal mines in West Bengal and Jharkhand due to power outage. They were evacuated after hours of agony.

In the national capital, thousands of Metro commuters had a harrowing time when the trains stopped inside the tunnels as transmission lines tripped at 1300 hours.

Railway services too were hit, with 300 trains getting disrupted in seven zones in 10 states.

In the national capital, the power collapse triggered disruption in Metro and train services, crippled water supply and choked roads due to non-functional traffic lights.

For the first time, the three inter-state transmission networks -- Northern Grid, Eastern Grid and North-Eastern Grid -- tripped together. While no official reason was given for the failure, sources said the trouble started in the eastern grid.

By 2030 hours, the supplies in the North-Eastern region and Delhi had been fully restored.

The grid failure and the chaos followed on a day when, in a Cabinet reshuffle, Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde was moved to the Home Ministry and Corporate Affairs Minister Veerappa Moily was given the additional charge of power.

The states affected included Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, J&K, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Sikkim and Assam. Besides 21 states, Union Territory of Chandigarh was also affected.