Affected areas included parts of Maidan upto the Kolkata Press Club, SN Banerjee Road upto Alimuddin Street, Dharmatalla, Dalhousie and the Sealdah station. Even the CESC main office at Chowringhee had to do without power yesterday evening.

However, despite the power failure in the station train services were normal.

An official of the CESC stated that a main reason for yesterday's power cut was a power trip in one of the CESC transformers located in Princep Street sub station.

At present, the Princep Street distribution centre has four transformers of 33 kilo volts each with 31 feeder lines (6,000 volts of power). Each transformer has around seven to eight such feeder lines connected with it. These feeder lines supply electricity to organisations located within its distribution network such as the Grand Hotel, Victoria House (the main office of the CESC) and The Statesman House.

Meanwhile, CESC spokesperson said that power cut was mainly due to a switch problem in one of the transformers of the Princep Street distribution centre.

"When we had detected the fault we tried to connect the feeder lines with the other three transformers. It was during that one and a half hours that central Kolkata was without power," the spokesperson said while adding that there has been no shortfall of electricity in the peak hours today.

A West Bengal Power Distribution Corporation Limited (WBPDCL) spokesperson said that since there was no major shortage in the State Electricity Board areas, power supply to the CESC was not restricted.