‘Can’t rule out possibility of sabotage’: Maharashtra minister on power outage


Maharashtra Energy Minister Nitin Raut has said that the possibility of sabotage in the Mumbai blackout incident on October 12 cannot be ruled out.

“The possibility of foul play / sabotage cannot be denied in the Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai power outage incident on Monday,” Raut said in a Marathi tweet.

A grid failure had caused massive power outages in Mumbai and its suburban areas on Monday, halting trains on the tracks, hampering those working from home and hitting stuttering economic activity hard.

The outages were attributed to a gunshot at a substation of the state transmission company MSETCL.

It took two hours for power supply for essential services to resume; other pockets began to receive energy in phases.

A spokesman for the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company (MSEDCL) said Tuesday evening that the power supply is no longer a limitation and the electricity supply in Mumbai has been fully restored.

While the consumers served by BEST, Adani Electricity Mumbai and Tata Power were the first to be supplied, those in the northeastern suburbs of Mulund and Bhandup and the adjoining cities of Thane and Navi Mumbai got power only after midnight.

Some sectors served by MSEDCL reported power outages even Tuesday, but the spokesperson said they were due to localized problems, voltage fluctuations and, in some cases, also to road works.

Prime Minister Uddhav Thackeray ordered an investigation into the incident, which occurred when one of the lines was under planned maintenance.

The city had last seen a massive blackout in June 2018.

(With inputs from agencies)

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