Governments spar over Mumbai power blackout

The state government of Maharashtra believes the power blackout that swept its biggest city Mumbai in October last year may have been the result of a Chinese cyberattack but the Indian government insists it was caused by human error.

Hyderabad (Telangana): On Monday, the Maharashtra state government had taken cognisance of a media report, claiming the Mumbai power outage in October last year was a possible Chinese cyber-attack and its home minister Anil Deshmukh sought a report from the cyber department.

"Cyberattacks happened on our northern & southern region load dispatch centres but they (malware) could not reach our operating system.

Commenting on the issue, Union Power Minister RK Singh said today that Maharashtra Home Minister has said that cyber-attacks happened on their SCADA system in Mumbai,".

He also said that "We don't have evidence to say that the cyber-attacks were carried out by China or Pakistan. Some people say that the group behind the attacks is Chinese but we don't have evidence. China will definitely deny it," Singh said.

Watch:Maharashtra energy minister briefs media on power outage 'attack' report

RK Singh later added that "two teams investigated the power outage and found that the outage was caused by human error and it was not a cyber attack. One of the teams submitted that a cyber attack did happen but they were not linked to the Mumbai grid failure.

Replying to the statement, Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh said that "cyber-attack issue is not just confined to Mumbai but it could spread across the country. We should not politicise this issue. I have spoken to Union Minister RK Singh about this. He has sought details about it and said that we should remain alert."

With inputs from Agencies

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