<p>Power supply in seven states across north India was hit early on Monday following a breakdown in the Northern Grid, an official said. Apart from Delhi, supply in Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir were disrupted.<br /><br />The massive grid failure left more than 300 million people without electricity in one of the worst blackouts to hit the country in more than a decade.<br /><br />Millions of people have been affected due to the power failure. Speaking to the media, Power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said 60 per cent of supply has been restored in the northern region. <br /><br />He also said that essential services have been restored and the remaining will be restored in around 2 hours. The minister also said a probe has been ordered into the failure of power in the northern region.<br /><br />Earlier, power supply was disrupted in seven states from 2.32 a.m. It is now partially affected in Delhi and Rajasthan. We are in the process of restoring the supply," VV Sharma, general manager of Power System Operation Corporation Limited, said.<br /><br />According to the Power System Operation Corp Ltd, the exact reasons for the grid failure are being ascertained.<br /><br />"The trouble resulted in power outage in the entire northern region, but for parts of Badarpur in south Delhi, Narora and Simbhauli in Uttar Pradesh and Bhinma in Rajasthan," a statement said.<br /><br />The company, a subsidiary of the state-run Power Grid Corporation of India, which manages the grid, said effort was underway to seek supplies from the eastern and the western regions, even as power to the railway system had been partially restored.<br /><br />"The restoration of the grid may take a few more hours. The engineers have been trying to restore it since early morning. We are giving first priority to public services like hospitals and transport," Sharma added.<br /><br />Metro services in Delhi has been hit due to power failure. Water and electricity supply across seven states in north India were also hit. The power supply is slowly being restored now.<br /><br />Officials at Delhi's international airport said flights were unaffected.<br /><br />India has a peak-hour power deficit of about 12 per cent, slowing the economy. Delhi's private power company, BSES, said northern India last suffered such a major outage in 2001.<br /><br />The power supply was hit in seven states since the northern grid collapsed. Power was restored in some parts of these states by around 9 am.<br /><br />According to power ministry officials the situation will return to normal by noon in Delhi.<br /><br />Thousands of rush-hour passengers faced lot of problem as metro services were hit and there was major traffic jam in many parts of Delhi.<br /><br />By 9:30 am, the situation was much better on all six lines on the Delhi Metro.<br /><br />Power failure also hit Delhi's six water treatment plants. According to media reports, five of water treatment plants are now operational. Delhi's Jal Board water pumping stations have also been hit. The Jal Board's are being given priority by the power companies.<br /><br />Huge traffic jams and chaos could be seen on the Delhi road's as traffic signals were down due to power failure. The Traffic Police are trying to physically man the traffic at some places.<br /><br />The train services were disrupted in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh due to collapse of the northern grid this morning, leaving a large number of<br />passengers stranded.<br /><br />A number of passenger trains bound for Delhi and beyond, Chandigarh, Amritsar, Jammu, Ferozepur and Kalka were stranded at way side stations due to failure of electricity, a senior railway official said.<br /><br />He said efforts were on to move the passenger trains with diesel engines after detaching them from running goods trains which would remain halted at way side railway stations.<br /><br />The stations where passenger trains were stranded include Ambala, Kurukshetra, Phillaur, Sirhind, Ludhiana, Phagwara and Karnal.<br /><br />Some trains were stranded mid way as the electric engines hauling them came to a halt due to failure of power. Kalka Chandigarh Delhi Shatabdi Express left the local station 90 minutes behind scheduled departure of 6.53 am after a diesel engine was attached to it.<br /><br />The trains affected include Amritsar Delhi Shatabdi Express, Allahabad Chandigarh Unchahaar, Lucknow Chandigarh Sadbhavna, Howraha Kalka Mail, Delhi Jammu Mail and a number of other super fast, express, passenger and local trains.<br /><br />The official said that the signal system had also blanked at a number of places due to the power failure.<br /><br />The hospital services were also affected in many places.<br /><br />However, operations at the Delhi airport largely remained unaffected due to the failure of Northern Grid. "As soon as there was a disruption in power supply, all our essential services like flight arrival and departure, check-in, baggage handling, aerobridge services were shifted to our back-up system.<br /><br />So all these operations remained normal", an airport spokesperson said. "We have one of the best DG (Diesel Generating) back-up system of the world.<br /><br />However, there might be some disruption in our non-essential services", he added. There were reports of air conditioning not functioning in Terminal 1D and some portions of Terminal 3. Also, there was no power in some retail outlets at the airport.<br /><br />"Overall ninety-five percent of our services remained unaffected", a spokesperson said.<br /><br />According to reports, preliminary enquiry shows the collapse happened due to a fault near Agra.<br /><br />(Agencies)</p>
