Questioning Union Government’s silence over Uttar Pradesh’s demand for increase in coal allocation Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav attacked the Centre on the shortage of coal in the thermal power stations leading to acute power crisis in the state.
Yadav in his latest tweet on Tuesday said: “letters have been written to the Centre for coal allocation to the power units. Response awaited.”
Recently, Yadav has taken the help of social media to highlight the plight of Uttar Pradesh and how Centre had tried to throw UP’s requests about additional electricity and allocation of coal to lumber room.
In last three days Yadav had tried to throw open a debate through social media when he said that many thermal power units in the state have been closed down because of paucity of coal plummeting power generation forcing officials to go for roistering all across the state.
In his tweets CM is specific when he said that IPP Rosa-300 MW was closed down due to coal shortage and a lANCO unit of Anpara is on verge of closure from today due coal shortage.
In another tweet he said, “State Outage: due to coal shortages Parichha-3-210 mw, Anpara is being supplied 8000 MT/day instead of reqt.of 28000 MT/day from past 3 days.
Interestingly, when Yadav was raising this issue through social media state Deputy-chairman UP Planning Commission Naveen Chandra Bajpai was attending the meeting of the coal ministers in New Delhi called by Union Power minister Piyush Goyal.
In this meeting Bajpai said that Uttar Pradesh is not getting required amount of coal for the thermal power stations resulting in decline in power generation. Even NTPC is working below par resulting in acute power crisis in the state.
He said Uttar Pradesh Government has been raising the issue of paucity of coal that is affecting power generation in the state for the last one month or so. “The Akhilesh Yadav Government has written many letters to Union Government asking it to supply good quality coal so that thermal units could operate efficiently. But unfortunately we are yet to get response from the Union Governemnt,” he said.
Bajpai even highlighted the skewed power sharing system adopted by the centre. Uttar Pradesh is the biggest state of the country but it is not getting required electricity. In comparison smaller states are getting more central share of power vis-à-vis density of population. Tgus we are forced to buy power at the rate of Rs 7 -10 per unit, he said.
“To ensure regular supply for electricity UP Government is purchasing 17 MU of power from power exchanges,” he said, During peak hour, the state needs 13,000 MW of electricity while it has just 10,000 MW of electricity at its disposal.