Power back after blackout in India

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Factories and workshops were running again yesterday after electrical grid collapses caused the world's two worst power blackouts.

An estimated 620 million people lost power when India's northern, eastern and north-eastern grids failed on Tuesday afternoon. On Monday, the northern grid failed, leaving 370 million people powerless.

After Tuesday's failure, workers managed to return power to the 20 affected states within hours.

India's new Power Minister, Veerappa Moily, said that by yesterday morning power had been restored across the country. Mr Moily, who took up his post on Tuesday, said an investigation had begun and he did not want to apportion blame or speculate about the cause.

Other officials said the blackout might have been the result of states drawing too much power from the grid. Some analysts dismissed that explanation, saying if that was the cause, such collapses would happen all the time.