The All-India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to direct the Ministry of Power to withdraw its orders for coal import. The AIPEF said the ministry has issued coercive orders to state power generating companies, forcing them to use the costly imported coal.
AIPEF chairman Shailendra Dubey said Union minister Prahlad Joshi said in Rajya Sabha on July 25 that there was no shortage of coal and the production of coal was 31% more as compared to last year. He said he had sent a letter to the prime minister, urging him to direct the Ministry of Power to immediately withdraw the directions given to state gencos to import 10% of coal.
In December last year, the Ministry of Power had decided to import 10% of coal as domestic supply was inadequate. In April earlier this year, the ministry said that thermal stations and state gencos must import coal in a time-bound manner — 50% by June 2022, 40% by August-end and the remaining 10% by December-end.
Joshi, in his reply in the Rajya Sabha, had specifically said that there was 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 22), the coal production was 204.876 MT as compared to 156.11 MT during the corresponding period last year, with a growth of about 31%.
AIPEF said it was crystal clear that while the Ministry of Power was repeatedly forcing the state thermal stations and gencos to import 10% of coal, the coal minister had been maintaining that there was no shortage of coal in the country.
Dubey said with the categorical stand of the coal minister in the parliament that there was no coal shortage, the Ministry of Power should withdraw the order for the import of 10% coal and also roll back the coercive measures to cancel/reduce domestic allocation of 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 which were forced to import coal while there was no shortage of coal in the country.