Issue of Mumbai power outage should not be politicised: Anil Deshmukh

Maintaining that the Mumbai power outage was because of a possible cyber attack, Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh on Tuesday said that the issue calls for alertness and should not be politicised.

Deshmukh said he had spoken to Union Power Minister R K Singh on the issue. “The cyber attack happened all over India...it is not just an issue of Maharashtra....we need to be more alert...he also told me that the Centre was alert,” he said.

Read | Mumbai power outage due to human error not cyber attack, says Union Power Minister R K Singh

Deshmukh said that the report suggests that a “foreign company” “might have introduced a malware” which resulted in the problem.

On Monday, the state's Energy Minister Dr Nitin Raut said that what has appeared in international media was true.

The New York Times in a report suggested that China launched a cyber attack against India, targeting its power grid in particular, in the wake of the border clashes in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh.

Read | Chinese hackers target India's power grid, vaccine companies: 10 things to know

According to Stuart Solomon, the CEO of Recorded Future, a Massachusetts-based company that studies the use of the internet by state actors, the cyber attack on power systems in Mumbai was carried out by a Chinese state-sponsored group, which the company called Red Echo.

The 12 October, 2020, power outage in Mumbai-MMR comprising the financial capital and parts of Thane, Palghar and Raigad districts brought the suburban railway network of Central Railway (CR) and Western Railway (WR) to a grinding halt, even as industrial activity was badly hit.

The incident took place at a time when the economy was being brought back to track through a phased-wise Unlock process after being hit by the Covid-19 lockdown.