Chandigarh, Feb. 18 -- The Punjab and Haryana high court has termed January 24 incident of power failure at Rajindra hospital in Patiala "shocking" and sought a report from the chief secretary, Punjab about establishments equipped with automatic power back up system.

"It is not surprising but shocking to note that in a public establishment like a hospital where electric breakup of even a few seconds can be fatal for certain patients, especially those on life support, the electric supply was disrupted for 13 minutes though the backup was available but the same took 2 minutes to be functional, because the same had to be operated manually.

"In these modern times, it is of utmost importance that hospitals ought to have automatic switch-over...