Mumbai, India's maximum city comes to a halt after massive power outages

India's maximum city of Mumbai came to a halt on Monday after a grid failure caused massive power outages in many parts from the morning.

After more than an hour of outages, power supply came back in a few areas and the train services were also fully restored.

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Earlier, the power failures severely hit Mumbai's lifelines, Central Railway and Western Railway, causing local trains to make unnecessary stops.

Maharashtra Energy Minister Nitin Raut said the electricity was interrupted due to maintenance and repair work at circuit one of 400 KV GIS centre, adding that it affected most of the parts of Mumbai and Thane.

"Repair and maintenance work was underway at Circuit 1 of 400 KV GIS centre and the entire load was put on Circuit 2. However, sudden technical failure in circuit 2 resulted in power being affected in most of the parts of Mumbai and Thane," he said.

Before Raut's remarks, the state electricity board, Western Railways, Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) blamed Tata Power for the power failure.

"In view of interruption in Traction power at 10.05 hours due to Grid failure of Tata Power company, services between Churchgate and Borivili are suspended. It shall be resumed as soon as traction power supply is restored," Sumit Thakur, a spokesperson of Western Railways said, as quoted by news agency IANS.

The crisis came at a time when India's financial capital is already dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and power outages will impact the overly stretched health infrastructure of the city.

Other services like water supply schedules, lifts, traffic signals were also hit due to the power failure.