By:Apurva Bhatt 

Monorail passengers had a unforgettable as a power failure lead to a complete stoppage of monorail operations. Raghav Pasnekar one of the passenger informs, “We were nearing Bhakti Park station when suddenly the train stopped. For a while we got frightened as this had never happened before and there was no announcements made. But after that when they announced it was a power failure we were all relived.”

All efforts to pull out a stranded rake to the nearest station, Bhakti Park, failed, following which the fire brigade had to be called. Eleven occupants of the train, including its pilot, were brought down with a cherry picker Prima facie, the reason for the power cut seems to be damage to the underground cable that supplies electricity from the Mysore colony substation to the traction guide way, said an MMRDA official. "There is no damage to either the traction substation or the rake, which managed to reach the station on its own as soon as power was restored."

The question is, what took so long for that to happen? An official from Scomi, the Malaysian company that operates the mono, said, "We tried to restore power, but in vain." The problem could have been serious had it occurred on a weekday. The chief minister has appointed the principal secretary, urban development, to inquire into the incident.