The Salt Lake stadium during the match. Picture by Amit Datta

Calcutta, Sept. 8: It was a tiny rat that finally felled the mighty government and made it hang its head in shame.

Shortly after power was restored at the Salt Lake stadium this evening, power minister Mrinal Banerjee disclosed that a rat had got into the works at the giant 132-KV sub-station known among state electricity board officials as the ?M-3? substation.

?It was a field rat that had sneaked into the ?bus bar? panel at the substation and led to the fault. When our engineers rushed to repair it, they took out a dead rat from inside the panel,? said Banerjee.

The power minister has ordered a probe into the events leading to the snag. ?If the fault had not been detected on time, the situation would have been far worse, a greater mishap could have taken place. I have asked officials to conduct a thorough inquiry into the matter,? he added. ?This interruption was not at all anticipated.?

Explaining the fault, SEB officials said the malfunction occurred when the ?bus bar? panels were distributing power to feeder lines. The ?bus bar? panels, officials explained, are used to distribute power after the transformers have brought down the high voltage at which the substation receives the power ? 132 KV ? to a more acceptable 11 KV, which can be supplied to the feeder lines.

Around 6.32 pm, one of the engineers on duty suddenly found a thin haze of smoke emanating from a ?bus bar? panel. He raised an alarm as the India versus Japan World Cup qualifier match was already on and there was an instruction from SEB authorities to be on alert.

?One of the engineers saw the smoke and rushed to the panel only to find sparks emanating from one of them. Power supply to large areas of Sector-III of Salt Lake, including the stadium and Labony, was switched off to repair the fault. When engineers opened the ?bus bar? panels, a rat that was electrocuted and had turned absolutely black was found inside,? said an official.

But, it was not easy to take the rat out as it was embedded deep in the panel. SEB engineers worked with great caution and took out the dead rodent. ?This had to be done with great caution as we were dealing with very high voltages of power,? an official said.

The state electricity board chairman, Sanjay Mitra, said that while the power at the stadium was switched off, it was put on the generator. ?So, at no stage was the stadium without any power supply,? he said.

While the power minister said that the interruption was for about eight minutes, some senior SEB officials said there was no power supply in the stadium for about 20 minutes. The power was supplied to the stadium through an alternative source. Large parts of Sector-III, however, experienced prolonged power failure.