Office-goers, students and other commuters had to face chaos on Tuesday morning (July 4) as services on the Purple Line of Namma Metro were disrupted due to a glitch during work related to power supply. While the disruptions began around 7.30 a.m., services were restored only by 12.08 p.m., leading to heavy crowds in all the stations on the stretch.
Trains from Kengeri were terminated at Indiranagar metro station and commuters had to take buses and autos to reach their destinations. Meanwhile, the Majestic station, where both purple and green line commuters interchange, saw huge crowd.
The queues at the metro stations were very long and many commuters had to miss several trains, making them reach office late. “I regularly take the metro from National College station to Trinity for work. I got into the green line train and got off at Majestic to switch to the purple line. But I was shocked to see so many people on the platform. Three trains passed and I still could not get in as there were so many people. As it was already late for my office, I went out to hail an autorickshaw. But as many people had come out from Majestic station like me, I could not get an auto too. I took the bus to my office and reached 1.5 hours later than usual,” said Nisarga Shivakumar, a content writer.
Anusha Bhaskar, another passenger said, “When I boarded the train from Indiranagar, the train took half an hour to reach Cubbon Park. I was getting very late and even when we got there, the doors wouldn’t open for a long time.”
Nukso C., a passenger, said, “I was going to Cubbon Park metro station from Baiyappanahalli when the train suddenly stopped for around 20 minutes. We couldn’t understand what was happening.”
Meanwhile, many irked passengers took to social media posting pictures of crowded stations and complaining about the rush on the metro.
According to BMRCL officials, the main reason for the disruption was the changing of power supply systems, including the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) at the Baiyappanahalli metro station on Monday night. The change of power system was going on as part of the yet-to-open 2.1-km Baiyappanahalli-K.R. Pura section’s pending works.
“The changing of the power system was not completed on time; this led to the disruption of the train service on Tuesday morning. However, we had rectified the issue and sorted it out by afternoon,” a senior official from the operations department of BMRCL told The Hindu.
