Mumbai power outage: Train passengers forced to walk on tracks

Power outage in Mumbai on Monday brought the local trains, considered as the city's lifeline, to a standstill for nearly two-and-a-half hours, causing hardships to commuters.

As fans and lights inside the trains also stopped working, many passengers preferred to jump out and walk on tracks to reach the nearest station or road.

According to railway officials, this was a rare occurrence in the recent past when the suburban services on both the Central Railway (CR) and Western Railway (WR) routes came to a halt due to power grid failure.

Last month, both the CR and WR services, which are currently being run only for essential services staff in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, were suspended due to water-logging on tracks after heavy rains.

Due to a power grid failure in the financial capital on Monday morning, all the suburban and long distance trains here were held up on tracks from 10.05 am, officials said.

The Central Railway's services on the harbour line, that connects the city to neighbouring Navi Mumbai, resumed first at 10.55 am, the CR said in a release.

Because of the power failure, several special outstation train services were also hit, forcing the railway authorities to reschedule their departure.

State's Power Minister Nitin Raut said the trouble emanated from Maharashtra State Electricity Transmission Company (MSETCL) facilities during a planned maintenance work.

Tata Power, which is into both generation and distribution, attributed the power outage to a simultaneous substation tripping at 1010 hrs at state-run transmission company MSETCL's two substations in the suburbs of Kalwa and Kharghar.

Raut said power supply will resume soon, as officials were working on it on a war footing. As the afternoon progressed, power at many pockets including the Bandra Kurla Complex business district, Lower Parel and South Mumbai started resuming.

With work-from-home (WFH) becoming the norm across vital industries like banking, finance and information technology, employee output was also impacted as the residences do not have electricity backup in a city which generally has stable power.

In some instances, the snapping of power came at the most unfortunate moment, which resulted in incidents like employees in an upscale business complex getting stuck in the elevator in the times of social distancing.