CHENNAI: A power outage plunged the offices of at least five ministers on the first floor of the Secretariat’s Main Building at Fort St George into darkness for about 25 minutes on Monday, drawing parallels to complaints of frequent power cuts across the State over the past month.

The outage began around 11 am and affected the offices of ministers N Anand, KA Sengottaiyan, P Venkatraman, K Vignesh and RV Ranjith Kumar. The Chief Minister’s Office, located in a different wing of the same floor, was unaffected.

After videos of ministers sitting in darkened offices went viral on social media, TNPDCL said a technical fault in the B-phase supply of one of the four switches feeding the first floor had disrupted power in some sections.

The buildings wing of the PWD, which maintains the Secretariat’s internal power infrastructure, rectified the fault and supply was fully restored by 11.25 am, TNPDCL said, adding that power supply across all floors was now normal.