Mumbai power cut: Supply to tens of millions goes down as commuters are forced to walk on tracks

Grid failure affects city’s train network, hospitals and key student examinations

Passengers walk on a railway track after trains got stranded due to a major power cut in Mumbai (AFP via Getty Images)

A grid failure cut power to large parts of India’s financial capital Mumbai and neighbouring areas on Monday morning, bringing the train network grinding to a halt and disrupting hospitals and key school exams.

In a tweet, the Mumbai’s electricity supply board said that the supply was interrupted due to “incoming electric supply failure” linked to the Tata Power plant in Kalwa, outside the city.  

Locals described it as the first sustained power outage across such a large area since 2012, when a failure of the main grid disrupted the supply across swathes of northern India.

Monday’s outage left potentially millions of train passengers stranded, with images on social media showing crowds abandoning their carriages and walking along tracks to reach the nearest station.

“We are clueless about how long we will have to wait here,” one commuter sat at a station platform told the ANI news agency. 

Several college exams affiliated with the University of Mumbai had to be rescheduled due to power failure, reported the Hindustan Times. “We had originally decided to reschedule exams to 4pm, but with no clarity on the status of electricity, our cluster head has informed all colleges to reschedule the exam to another day. We’ve already started informing all our students,” Marie Fernandes, principal of St Andrews College, Bandra, told the paper.

Maharashtra state’s energy minister Nitin Raut said that there was a technical error when Maharashtra Electricity Transmission Company was undertaking maintenance work in Mumbai and Thane region. “It will be restored in approximately an hour,” Raut tweeted earlier, though outages were still being reported into the afternoon.

According to The Indian Express, state authorities also issued a series of guidelines to locals. The city’s civic body directed hospitals to be prepared with power back-up supply for up to four hours. It also warned citizens of the potential for reduced water supply.

However, India’s two main stock exchanges, the National Stock Exchange and BSE and the Mumbai airport remained unaffected, reported PTI.