Blackout in north India, neighbouring states blamed

Entire north India on Monday plunged into the worst power crisis in a decade throwing normal life out of gear for several hours in eight states with collapse of the Northern Grid early morning.

From Railways to Delhi Metro to water supplies, many of the services were severely hit since the grid failed at 2.35 am. Office-goers and students faced harrowing times in the national capital where the Metro train services were disrupted.

Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir suffered the power outage. Besides, union territory of Chandigarh was also snapped from the grid.

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Till afternoon, Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said that 60 per cent of electricity supply had resumed. He said that power was drawn from Bhutan and Eastern and Western grids as generating stations in the North had come to a halt.

Normalcy would take a few more hours, officials said.

More than 8,000 MW capacity of the country's largest electricity producer NTPC, spread across six power plants, was hit.

Shinde said, "The fault is not known as yet... somewhere near Agra, a failure has happened. We will inquire (into) that." However, Delhi Power Minister Haroon Yusuf blamed neighbouring states for over drawing electricity from the grid.

Services of about 300 trains, including Rajdhani, Shatbadi and Duronto, were severely affected.

Shinde announced a three-member panel to look into the power failure, the worst since 2002.

The grid failure not only impacted more than one fourth of the country's population but also several industrial areas and the information technology services in Gurgaon and Noida in the NCR region.

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"In 2001 and 2002, grid failure had happened. After 10 years it has happened now...the grid at that time (2001-02) failed during midnight and was only restored at 4:30 pm," Shinde said.

Most parts of north India especially Delhi went without electricity for about many hours. The power supply situation is slowly coming back to normal in the states.

When contacted at 2 pm, POSOCO Chief Executive Officer S K Soonee said that the Northern Grid would be restored fully in a couple of hours.

"Delhi has got its full load. Now about 23,000 MW electricity is available on northern grid while the demand is over 35,000 MW," Soonee told PTI.

Power System Operation Corporation Ltd (POSOCO), part of state-run Power Grid, manages the transmission grids in the country.

Currently, the Northern Grid is getting about 5,447 MW from Eastern and Western Grids.

The Northern Grid, which is estimated to cater to around 28 per cent of country's population, had seen a major collapse in 2001-02. In January 2010 too, the Northern Grid had tripped due to fog moisture.