India hit by second major power outage

A second major power cut has hit northern and eastern India, leaving an estimated 600 million people without electricity. It’s the second major power outage to hit India in as many days. India's northern electricity grid was hit for a second day in a row on Tuesday and this time it was joined by the country's eastern and north-eastern networks. Tuesday's power failure has affected around 600 million people, around half of India's population, making it one of the world's most widespread power failures. The north, north-eastern and the eastern grids are down but we are working and we would have them restored shortly," Naresh Kumar, a spokesman at the Powergrid Corporation of India Ltd, said. Twenty of India's 28 states are believed have been affected, with outages reported in several major cities including the capital Delhi. According to Shailendre Dubey, an official at the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation, the northern and eastern grids went down at around 1 p.m. local time. The third grid collapsed shortly afterwards. Traffic lights went out across Delhi and the city's metro system, which serves around 1.8 million people daily, was forced to ground to a halt causing chaos for the second day on a row. On Monday, the country's northern grid collapsed for several hours, leaving cities across eight states without power. It was restored, albeit temporarily, later that evening. The power failures have raised serious concern over India's outdated infrastructure.