NEW DELHI — India’s energy crisis cascaded over half the country Tuesday when three of its regional grids collapsed, leaving 620 million people without government-supplied electricity in one of the world’s biggest-ever blackouts.
Hundreds of trains stalled across the country and traffic lights went out, causing widespread traffic jams in New Delhi. Electric crematoria stopped operating, some with bodies half burnt, power officials said. Emergency workers rushed generators to coal mines to rescue miners trapped underground.
The power failure followed a day after a similar, but smaller failure.
The new power failure affected people across 20 of India’s 28 states — more than the entire population of the European Union plus Turkey.
Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde blamed the new crisis on states taking more than their allotted share of electricity.
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