Power paralysis cripples North India

[1]

In an event with no parallel, half the country was gridlocked and faced a blackout Tuesday afternoon as the Northern, Eastern and Northeastern Grids, which carry about 50,000 MW of electricity, tripped around 1 pm, affecting 22 states and over 600 million people.

The grid collapse also left over 400 trains and three lakh passengers stranded at different places in the country on the second consecutive say, just a day after the collapse of the Northern Grid, which had
taken 15 hours to get fully functional again, and had left two lakh passengers and over 300 trains stuck in eight railway divisions on Monday.

The collapse of three grids also resulted in 200 miners getting trapped in West Bengal coal mines, who were evacuated late on Tuesday evening, while efforts were on to rescue 65 others stuck in Jharkhand mines.

Reports from West Bengal and Jharkhand said 265 miners had got trapped in various coal mines of the state-owned Eastern Coalfields and Bharat Coking Coal in the two states following the massive power breakdown.

The grid collapse brought to a grinding halt operations of the Delhi Metro, which could be partially restored only by the evening, while traffic in the national capital was thrown out of gear for the second straight day, as signals stopped functioning on the roads.

Sources said the Union power ministry, in a report submitted to the Prime Minister’s Office, accused the Uttar Pradesh government of having indulged in overdrawal of power from the Northern Grid, which eventually led to the tripping.

Delhi power minister Haroon Yusuf had on Monday accused both UP and Haryana of overdrawing power and of grid indiscipline.

While the Northern Grid covers nine regions — Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, UP, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Chandigarh, the Eastern Grid covers six states — West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Sikkim.

The North-Eastern Grid connects Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura.

The Western and Southern Grids were unaffected. Temporary arrangements were being made to draw power from the Western Grid to restore supply in the affected states, a senior power ministry official said.

The UP government sacked UP Power Corporation Ltd chairman- cum-managing director Avnish Awasthi late on Monday night, apparently for “grid indiscipline”.

Mr Awasthi was replaced by Mr A.P. Misra, an officer of the corporation’s engineering cadre. This action was seen to follow the Centre blaming UP for the Northern Grid failure on Monday. On Tuesday, however, the Uttar Pradesh government denied that the state was responsible for the second grid failure.

While restoration of power for essential services on a priority basis began around 3 pm in Delhi and other states, normal power supply could be restored in most areas only by around 7 pm.

Services at airports and hospitals remained largely unaffected due to backup power at these installations. Sources said power supply at the Prime Minister’s residence had also been cut for around one hour.