Country shines after date with darkness

Bangladesh has smarted from the biggest power outage in recent memory apparently after a failure at a power station that feeds electricity imported from India into the National Grid (NG). Electricity eluded tens of millions across vast swathes to bring life to its knees from morning to late night on Saturday as streets usually bathed in light were instead pitch black after the sunset. The power cut started when the collapse in the grid took place around 11:30am. The whole country plunged into darkness as evening fell when the restoration process took longer than expected. Power began to flicker back on in installments several hours later. But the country breathed easier close to midnight when the scenario returned to normal. After an outage of nearly 12 hours, electricity supply to the capital fully resumed at about 11:05pm. Power Division officials said the outage originated from a malfunction at the Bangladesh-India Power Transmission Centre in Kushtia's Bherhamara. But State Minister for Power and Energy Nasrul Hamid and other officials suspect 'mistake' by some officials could have led to the situation. Authorities have formed a 7-member high level committee, led by the additional Power Division secretary, to probe the surprising collapse in the NG. It has been asked to submit its findings within 3 working days, according to a news agency.