Power lines trip off, N India plunges into darkness

POWER FAILURE: The worst affected were railway passengers who had to wait for hours.

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New Delhi: It was a red signal all the way for over five hours for these trains operating on the Kanpur-Delhi and Agra-Delhi route due to a huge power grid failure late on Thursday night that also plunged parts of the capital Delhi, its suburbs Gurgaon and Noida into total darkness.

However, the worst affected were railway passengers who had to wait for hours and this time the grid failure was not due to overdrawing.

"The failure was caused by smog and pollutants that settled on the insulators of the power plants that resulted in their tripping or what is called a flash over on the insulators," says Power Grid Executive Director, S K Sonee.

The Kanpur-Delhi route took the biggest hit with all trains coming into New Delhi being delayed by an average of about 3 hours. There was a massive backlog created because of the delay affecting over 55 trains.

For some passengers of the Bihar Sampark Kranti mail, the wait for their train stretched into hours. “I have an exam to give and I will be late,” says stranded passenger, Geetanjali.

Although the power is back, the railway authorities say that it may take all of Friday to clear the backlog.

“We are trying our best to try and get this problem solved,” says Chief PRO, Northern Railways, Rajiv Saxena.

With inputs from Raheel Khrusheed