Blackout in north India as grid collapses

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.

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. MORE