Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan refused to adhere to grid discipline and continued to overdraw power despite repeated warnings by the Northern Regional Load Despatch Centre (NRLDC) and other State centres, posing a serious danger to the safety of the grid. Even more shocking is the fact that most of these States have refused to install under frequency relays (UFRs) for automatic demand management schemes, which could have prevented such a massive failure. Similarly, the States were found to have overdrawn power when the grid frequency was below 49.5 Hz and even 48.8 Hz, in contravention of the orders of the regulatory authority and load despatch centres.
However, the Punjab government described the charge of overdrawing as absurd, factually baseless and grossly misleading.
Such was the scale of power failure that mining operations in Eastern India came to a grinding halt. Nearly 200 miners were trapped in the Eastern Coalfield at Burdwan in West Bengal and another 65 were trapped in the Bharat Coking Coal facility in Jharkhand.