Mumbai: Maharashtra State Common Entrance Test (CET) Cell is considering to rescheduling the examination of students from the Mumbai Region who could not attend MHT CET 2020 because of the power outage Monday.
The state CET Cell issued two notifications in quick succession Monday as the power outage prolonged for hours in Mumbai, Thane and other areas bringing to halt the routine activities and also disturbing suburban train service.
“The State CET Cell, Mumbai is conducting PCM group examination from 12th October to 20th October 2020 at 175 test centres in Maharashtra”, the CET cell said in a notification released around noon on Monday.
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“On 12th October 2020, due to power outage in the Mumbai Region at around 10:00 am, FIRST SESSION candidates at the following five Test Centres - having codes 458, 459, 463, 826 and 8597, faced disruption in the said examination”, it added.
“In the view of power outage, to safeguard the interests of the appearing candidates, their PCM Examination would now be held on or before 20th October 2020”, it said.
As the power outage prolonged further, and it was feared that students appearing for the afternoon session could also face problem, the CET Cell issued another notification assuring them not to worry.
“… On 12th October 2020, due to power outage in the Mumbai Region and around, Western and Central Railway Local Train services were affected. As a result, possibility of the Candidates not being able to reach their Test Centres in time cannot be entirely ruled out", the CET Cell said.
“To safeguard the interests of appearing candidates, if requests are received from such candidates whose PCM Examination was scheduled in the SECOND SESSION (2.30 pm to 5.30 pm) on 12th October 2020, and who could not reach their test centres in Mumbai Region and around in time or who reached their test centres too late and hence could not appear in the Examination, the State CET Cell would decide about the course of action, in the best interest of such candidates", it added.
"The concerned candidates would be informed of the decision of the State CET Cell in due course", it said.
A major power breakdown owing to a grid failure brought bustling Mumbai and parts of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region of Thane, Raigad and Palghar districts to its knees on Monday, officials said here.
Rattled by the backlash over the outage, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Energy Minister Nitin Raut ordered a high-level probe into the incident, even as supply limped back to normalcy by 2 pm.
Raut said that some regular maintenance work was going on at the 400KV lines at Kalwa, Thane.
"All the load had been shifted to the other circuit which faced some technical issues and broke down, hitting power supply to large parts of Mumbai-Thane. Work is underway on a war footing to restore power," Raut assured in a statement.
Even as angry Mumbaikars vented their ire on social media, Thackeray spoke with Raut and later summoned an emergency meeting of high-level officials including MoS Energy Prasad Tanpure to discuss the power breakdown which left the country's commercial capital crippled for several hours.
One of the Mumbai distributors, BEST said the power supply was "interrupted due to TATA's incoming electric supply failure" at around 10.15 a.m.
The power breakdown hit the lifelines of Mumbai -- Central Railway and Western Railway -- with all local trains halting en route till Vasai and Diva.
Hapless commuters at many locations jumped down and started walking down to the nearest suburban railway station as trains remained suspended between Churchgate-Borivali and CSMT-Thane during the power breakdown period.
Since power supply from MSETCL was available at Vasai Road the WR managed to operate essential suburban trains on the Borivali-Virar sector, said spokesperson Sumit Thakur.
A couple of hours later by 12.30 pm, spokespersons of both CR and WR announced that services had resumed and would soon be back to normal operations.
A BMC spokesperson said the power outage was due to the Central Grid failure of the Tata Power at Kalwa, Thane, and restoration could take around an hour.
All operations at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport were normal, said a spokesperson for Mumbai International Airport Ltd.
"The Bombay Stock Exchange is functioning normally. The listing ceremony was concluded successfully for Mazagon Shipbuilders this morning," a BSE spokesperson told IANS.
The power failure had other repercussions like hitting water supply schedules, lifts getting stuck in some buildings, malfunctioning traffic signals leading to chaos on roads, among others.
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