Mumbai power outage: Government not ruling out sabotage

The Maharashtra government is also probing the sabotage angle in Monday’s power outage in the Mumbai metropolitan region.

“A possibility of sabotage cannot be ruled out in the power tripping incident in Mumbai,” state Energy Minister Dr Nitin Raut said.

Taking a serious view of the incident, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray set up an inquiry committee to get into the details and has assured that no one would be spared.

Read | Maharashtra CM orders probe into power outage in Mumbai

“The interim report of a probe committee set up by the state government will submit its report in a week and its recommendations would be implemented,” Dr Raut told reporters ahead of the weekly Cabinet meeting.

Besides, a team of Central Electricity Authority from New Delhi is also probing the incident.

“There are certain protocols that must be adhered to whenever any maintenance work is taken up. We shall investigate whether these protocols were followed or not by the officials of MahaVitaran (MSEDCL)… However, we don’t rule out the possibility of sabotage or foul play and stringent action will be taken against those found guilty,” Dr Raut asserted.

Initial reports have said that maintenance work was taken up on the 400KV line 1 in Kalwa and the entire load was shifted to line 2, which tripped owing to some technical glitches, having a cascading effect in five MMR districts of Mumbai City, Mumbai Suburban, Thane, Palghar and Raigad.

While private distributors like Adani, Tata and BEST had restored supply in their respective regions on Monday, some areas served by MahaVitaran were restored on Tuesday.