MUMBAI: A rare power outage caused by a tripping of two substations in Thane led to Mumbai, Thane, Kalyan being out of power for several hours on Monday. The power outage not just brought Mumbai to a halt but also led to the BJP attacking the Shiv Sena-led government for the failure.Energy minister Nitin Raut claimed that the Kalwa -Padgha transmission line got tripped leading to the outage in Thane, Palghar, Navi Mumbai, Raut claimed that it was a ‘technical issue’ adding that the power would be restored in an hour. Till 6.30 pm power was not restored in many parts of Thane as well as Mumbai.The BJP, however, disagreed with Raut’s description of the fault being technical. Former energy minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule of the BJP told media persons that the Kalwa to Talegaon line was facing issues of breakdown for last three days. But it was not rectified.“The Kalwa-Padgha line had begun to break down at 7am. It could have been rectified within 15 minutes. Instead, officials put the load on to the Kalwa Talegaon line causing enormous load and this caused a total breakdown at 10 am. This is irresponsibility and incompetence that caused this,” said Bawankule.The former energy minister said that the transmission company and the state load despatch centre (SLDC) were responsible for the fiasco and should be held responsible.
