Title - Coal Ministry passes the buck on Indian Railways

Coal Ministry seems to have jumped the guns in putting the blame at the doors of Indian Railways for the inadequate supply of coal to power plants.

As the 2 ministries spar over the quantum of coal transported to thermal plants for power generation, statistics reveal that the Indian Railways carried 10.7% more coal from the Coal India Limited between April and November this year highest ever in recent years.

As a result, the coal at CIL pithead came down from 70.87 million tonnes to 43 million tones on November 30th.

A Railway official said that “This is a drawdown of 28 million tonnes of pithead stocks.”

With Power Ministry repeatedly sending SOS about shortage of coal at its thermal plants, the coal ministry passed the buck on the railway ministry and accused it of not transporting enough coal lying at the pithead.

An internal note of the ministry on this raging controversy between the Government departments suggest the loading for coal reached an all time high of 199 rakes a day in December. It even crossed 200 rakes a day barrier this month.

As a result, the number of critical power houses has come down to 30 from 50 and those in the super critical category are down to now 23 from 35. The power houses having a stock of four days are classified as super critical while those with a stock of seven days are put into critical category.

Official said that “Inventories of power houses are up to 10.4 million tonne from the earlier figure of 7 million tonne.”

However, there has been 14% growth in coal generated electricity production between April and November this year. During this period, total coal loading by Railways was around 315.61 million tonne, an additional 4.12 million tonne over the budget estimates of 311.49 million tonne.

Source - dailypioneer.com