CHANDIGARH: Parliament on Monday was informed that there is no shortage of coal in the country, then why does the Ministry of Power issued instructions for the import of 10% requirement of coal to all the generating companies in a time-bound manner, All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) has written to the Prime Minister on July 26 seeking withdrawal of the coal import instructions.
V K Gupta Spokesperson AIPEF said on Wednesday that now under the new clarification given by coal and mines ministry the extra cost of imported coal must be reimbursed by the Ministry of Power.It my be mentioned that under the administrative coercion by the Ministry of Power, most of the state generating companies thermal power stations, as well as central sector NTPC thermal stations , were forced to give consent for the import of coal.
The Power Ministry wrote to all state generating companies that If blending with domestic coal is not started by June 15 then the domestic allocation of the concerned defaulter thermal power plants will be further reduced by 5%.
In the past few months, all States and even private Generation companies have been directed to import ten percent coal. Those vacillating were threatened by the center of stoppage of supply from Coal India.It may be mentioned that 86.5% of NTPC's coal import order have been placed with Adani.
In response to a starred question number 832 was filed in the Rajya Sabha by CM Ramesh on the shortage of coal, the reply given by Joshi stated, "There is no shortage of coal in the country. The all-India coal production in the year 2021-2022 was 778.19 Million Tonne (MT) in comparison to 716.083 MT in the year 2020-2021.
Further, in the current financial year (up to June 2022), the country has a Production (of) 204.876 MT of coal. V K Gupta said that it seems that there is no coordination between power and coal ministries and consumers will pay for the additional cost of imported coal In this context now the extra expenditure incurred by state thermal and state Gencos for forcible import of coal should be reimbursed/ compensated to the states who were forced to import coal while there was no shortage of coal in the country.