Chandigarh, May 2 -- The Punjab and Haryana high court has asked the Punjab chief secretary and Punjab state power corporation (PSPCL) managing director to apprise the court by May 19 whether the power back-up system at Rajindra Hospital, Patiala, has been upgraded.

The directions came from the bench of chief justice Sheel Nagu and justice Sumeet Goel after it was informed that yet another incident of power outage was reported at the hospital - for 30 minutes in the maternity ward and operation theatre on April 15. "Let an affidavit by the managing director of the PSPCL and the chief secretary of the state of Punjab be filed in response to the present application, especially on the point as to whether the automatic switch-over backup has...