Days after Joshi claimed there’s no coal shortage, AIPEF asks why gencos importing coal

New Delhi: All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) in a letter sent to the Prime Minister has stressed that the Ministry of Power must be directed to withdraw its orders and directives to the states/state gencos, forcing them to expedite coal imports that were not required/justified in the wake of the coal ministry's reply in Parliament on July 25, an AIPEF statement said. The AIPEF has also sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention to direct the power ministry to withdraw its directions to states to expedite coal imports for thermal power plants.

AIPEF has said that in this context now the extra cost of imported coal must be borne by the power ministry.

AIPEF Chairman Shailendra Dubey on Tuesday sent a letter to the Prime Minister, urging him to intervene and issue effective directions to the Ministry of Power to immediately withdraw the instructions given to state gencos to import 10 percent of coal in the light of the reply given by Coal and Mines Minister Prahlad Joshi in the Rajya Sabha on July 25 that there is no shortage of coal and production of coal and it is 31 percent more as compared to last year.

The AIPEF letter stated that on December 7, 2021, the Ministry of Power took the decision to import 10 percent of coal as the domestic supply was inadequate.

On April 28, 2022, the Ministry of Power directed that thermal stations and state gencos must import coal in time bound manner, 50 percent by June 30, 2022; 40 percent up to August 31, 2022; and 10 percent up to October 31, 2022.

On May 18, 2022, the power ministry issued a direction (order), stating that "if blending with domestic coal is not started by June 15, 2022, then the domestic allocation of the concerned defaulter thermal power plants will be further reduced by 5 percent".

"Under the Administrative coercion by the Ministry of Power, most of the state Gencos, thermal power stations as well as central sector thermal stations were forced to give consent for import of coal," the letter stated.

In the meantime, starred question number 832 was filed in the Rajya Sabha by CM Ramesh on the shortage of coal.

In response, the reply given by Joshi stated, "There is no shortage of coal in the country. India's 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 as compared to 156.11 MT during the same period of last year with a growth of about 31 percent".

AIPEF said it is seen that while the Minister of Power was repeatedly stressing on state thermal stations and gencos to import 10 percent of coal, on the contrary, the Ministry of Coal has asserted that "there is no shortage of coal in the country."

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