Life in the city was totally disrupted causing inconvenience to office-goers and citizens. Telephones at the office of this newspaper were constantly ringing with harassed citizens wanting to know when the power would be restored.

Reliable sources attributed the power failure to a break-down in the Madhya Pradesh grid resulting in the tripping of lines from Korhadi to Bhilai generating stations, Bhilai sub-station to Nagpur and Nagpur to Parli at around 11 a.m. resulting in a cascading effect. Some of the lines also tripped in Bhusaval and Babaleshwar. Moreover, around 3450 mega watts of power from the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) in Madhya Pradesh which is also supplied to the State everyday also came to a grinding halt causing an additional load on the total power supply of the State, sources revealed.

Significantly, Vidharbha, Khandesh and Marathwada (VKM) in western Maharashtra were formed into a separate system today around the same time when the cascade tripping occurred. Today, they were separated from the main system and therefore not affected by the power failure, sources revealed. Power supply, however, continued in Koyna, Uran, Nashik and Tarapore. Mumbai, certain rural areas in Pune, Nashik, city areas of Solapur were also not affected by the power failure. Kolhapur city went without power today.

Sources, however revealed that power supply had been restored at two stations in Bhusaval and open station in Korhadi and power would be gradually restored to different parts of the city. In the city, sources revealed that the tripping occured in Bhosari and certain other city areas leading to a collapse of the system.

Executive engineer V V Joshi maintained that non-generation of power in Korhadi, Bhusaval, Chandrapur and Parli generating stations had resulted in a cascade tripping thereby affecting the power supply in the State. At present, even as partial supply was available from Koyna and Nashik, the MSEB authorities said they were forced to resort to half an hour load-shedding to prevent any problems. The reasons for the power failure, however, were not known, he said. Chief engineer Ashok Shinde said he could not give any details since he could not get through to the chief load despatch station at Kalwa.