Power cut hits Mumbai's financial districts hardest

After the Tata plant glitch, Nariman Point saw power outages for hours, prompting some offices to send employees home early; BKC had an outage for about an hour, but it  led to server problems at MMRDA

The technical glitch at the Tata Power plant and the subsequent rotational load shedding hit the financial nerve centres of the city the hardest. While most major civic-run and private hospitals in the city weren’t affected as they had generator backup, several corporate offices in Nariman Point and BKC had to call it a day much earlier than usual.

Let there be light: Komal Khatri, assistant vice-president (corporate finance) at Portfolio Financial Services, uses the light from her cellphone to work at her Nariman Point office

One such office in Nariman Point’s Mittal Court faced a long power cut after 3.30 pm, after which all the employees were told to leave at least two hours earlier than usual. Sunil Singla, a partner at Portfolio Financial Services Ltd, said, “We decided to wait for a while, but after there was no sign of the electricity coming back even by 5.30 pm, we asked our employees to head home.”

Darkness enveloped part of the city’s skyline, including Nariman Point, as seen from Marine Drive. Pics/Bipin Kokate

“The power cut was surprising because the last time electricity had gone in the area was years ago. One of our staff members is pregnant and she had to walk down six floors,” he said, adding that power wasn’t back even at 7 pm.

The central business district of Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) also took a hit, with power outages taking place in the morning and afternoon. While power was restored by 1 pm, many major offices, including that of the

MMRDA, had to work with slow Internet connections due to server problems.

The power outage began in many offices in BKC around 10 am and normalcy was restored after 45 minutes. An MMRDA official said, “I was working in my office when the lights went out around 10 am and power was restored only after 45 minutes. There was an outage again at around 11.30 am, but it was back in less than ten minutes the second time.”

While many offices had generators, employees at the MMRDA office had to contend with a slow Internet connection, due to some problem in the server caused by the outage.

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