Maharashtra’s Energy Minister Nitin Raut has said the possibility of a dirty act or sabotage in the Maharashtra blackout incident cannot be ruled out. “The possibility of foul play / sabotage cannot be denied in the Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai blackout incident on Monday,” Raut said in a tweet.
He said a technical committee is being formed and an interim report will arrive in a week. Action will then be taken immediately, based on the interim report.
A rare city-wide power outage paralyzed Mumbai on Monday, disrupting local train services, trapping people in elevators and disrupting work from home adopted by millions during the ongoing pandemic. The train services took two and a half hours to resume operations. The major network failure affected the water supply, the traffic signals stopped working, causing chaos on the roads.
Power outages were also reported in suburbs such as Thane, Panvel, Dombivili and Kalyan, along with those in the island city and the suburbs.
Maharashtra’s Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray chaired a high-level meeting on October 12 evening and ordered an immediate investigation into the blackout incident.
The city and adjacent areas had last seen a massive power outage in June 2018 due to a technical failure and it also led to a sustained period of loss of charge for some consumers.
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