The All India Power Engineers Federation has termed the June 01 directive issued by the Central Government to import coal again as an attempt by the Central Government to put undue pressure on the states and reiterated its demand that since the coal crisis is not the fault of the state power generating houses, hence additional cost of coal imports should be borne by Central Government.

Shailendra Dubey, Chairman, All India Power Engineers Federation said in a statement issued here on Saturday said that the order issued by the Central Government on June  01 states that the thermal power stations who have not placed their indents upto June 03 with Coal India limited for imported coal or have not initiated their own tender process  for  import of coal for blending purposes  they will be allocated only 70% of quantity of domestic coal from June 07 and allocation will be further reduced to 60% from June 15.

This is clearly an inappropriate response being extended to import coal which is not justified.

Dubey has appealed to all Chief Ministers of States to strongly oppose this unilateral dictatorial order of Union Ministry of Power to import coal.

Notably, many States including Uttar Pradesh have decided not to go for import of coal. Other States not going for import of coal are Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Haryana and Kerala. He said that on the one hand, the Central Government has been claiming till April that the production of Coal India is higher than the previous year and there is no crisis of coal, on the other hand, on the contrary, the Central Government is saying that Power houses should import coal and now this coal import programme has been extended till March 31’23.

He further said that most of the thermal power stations in the states are not designed for imported coal. Blending imported coal will increase tube leakages in their boilers. He said that shortage of rakes of railways is being cited as the main reason. In such a situation, how this coal will be transported to the thermal power stations located several thousand kilometres away which will come to the ports, should also be told by the Union Power Minister.    

The All India Power Engineers Federation has again stated that the present coal crisis has arisen due to the acute lack of co-ordination between the various ministries of the Central Government, Power, Coal and Railways.

Therefore, undue pressure should not be put on the states to import coal by reducing their allocation of domestic coal and if the states are forced to import coal, then the central government should bear the additional burden of imported coal.In above context, Madhya Pradesh Vidyut Mandal Abhiyanta Sangh extends their steadfast support to AIPEF and also vehemently opposes the undue pressure of GoI for coal import (vide circular from Power Ministry) on MP State Power Generating Company and demands from Hon’ble Chief Minister of MP; Shree Shivraj Singh Chouhaan, to kindly intervene in the matter.

The Sangh has also requesting to CM for issuing the directives to concern for immediate stopping the tendering process for purchase of import coal, in the interest of the domicile of MP and to oppose for the same in line with other aforesaid states.