Even wider blackouts sweep India for second day
NEW DELHI, July 31 — Grid failure hit India for a second day today, cutting power to hundreds of millions of people in the populous northern and eastern states including the capital Delhi and major cities such as Kolkata.
Passengers sit in a train as they wait for electricity to be restored at a railway station in the northern Indian city of Allahabad, July 30, 2012. — Reuters picThe government said the northern, eastern and north-eastern grids were hit, wider than yesterday's blackouts.
Delhi's metro system ground to a halt and office buildings ran on back-up generators a day after a 12-hour blackout caused commuter chaos in the bustling capital, underscoring overstretched infrastructure that has weighed heavily on India's economy.
"The northern grid has failed again," Arvinder Singh Bakshi, the chairman of the Central Electricity Authority, told Reuters.
The northern grid alone covers more than 300 million people from the mountains of Himachal Pradesh to the Ganges plains in Uttar Pradesh, which has a larger population than Brazil.
TV stations said the eastern grid was also affected and a Reuters reporter said some areas of the former capital Kolkata in the east of the country were without power. — Reuters
