Millions have gone without power in India's financial capital Mumbai and surrounding areas for hours after a grid failure triggered its first major blackout in more than two years.
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The outage on Monday stranded thousands of train passengers, disrupted online university exams and affected mobile telephone services before power was restored to most parts of the city of 20 million.
The grid failure was caused by "technical problems" during maintenance work, the energy minister of Mumbai's home state of Maharashtra said. In mid-2018, a fire at a transformer sparked similar power cuts in the city and its suburbs.
Throughout Monday's breakdown, Mumbai's international airport and the country's two main stock exchanges in the city, the National Stock Exchange and BSE , operated normally, their spokespeople said.
"Power supply to all essential services in Mumbai, suburbs ... have been restored. Non-essential services will also be restored shortly," Maharashtra energy minister Nitin Raut said on Twitter.
The government-run Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport agency, Adani Power Ltd and Tata Power Co Ltd - the three main suppliers to Mumbai - had been affected by the outage that extended to hospitals, many of which are treating COVID-19 patients.
Mumbai's trains, which are generally packed and move more than seven million people a day to their offices and factories, have resumed operations after more than two hours of inactivity due to the power failure.
Train services in the city have been curtailed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and they are carrying far fewer passengers than usual. Still, social media was splashed with pictures of people stranded inside lightless trains and in railway stations.
The Times of India said final-year online exams across Mumbai universities have been postponed due to the blackout.
Australian Associated Press
