In an effort to meet the coal requirement of thermal power projects, the Centre has chalked out a plan to provide “critical rail connectivity” between the largest coal deposit States of Jharkhand, Odisha and Chhattisgarh.
In Jharkhand, the Railway, Power and Coal Ministry have identified the Tori-Shivpur (44 km) and Shivpur-Kathautia (53 km) railway lines as one corridor critical for feeding the thermal power projects located in the three States. These two railways lines are located in North Karanpura region under Coal India limited (CIl).
The second corridor falling in Odisha would be the Jharsuguda-Barpalli-Sardega railway line (53 km) in the Ib Valley under CIl. The third mega corridor will be the 180-km-long Bhupdevpuir-Korichapan-Dharamjaigarh line in Chhattisgarh under Mand-Raigarh coalfield.
A joint meeting of Railway Minister DV Sadananda Gowda and MoS (Independent Charge) of Coal & Power Piyush Goyal was held on Thursday. Present on the occasion were MoS Railways Manoj Sinha, Chairman Railway Board Arunendra Kumar, Railway Board Members and senior officials from Ministry of Coal & Power and Railways.
“The matter was discussed in detail to produce and transport 100 million tons of coal for augmenting power generation in the country. A visit to Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh by high officials of all concerned ministries is likely to take place next week to sort out issues of land acquisition, forest and environment,” said a senior Railway official.
Gowda, Sinha and Goyal stressed the need for completing the projects within a strict time frame.
The Railway Minister gave instructions for better coordination among various stakeholders and all officers were given instructions to comply with timelines for construction of these lines.
“It was decided to have continuous monitoring of these projects at a ministerial level in order to give a fillip to the construction of these lines.
A multi-disciplinary Project Monitoring Unit is being formed with representatives from Railways, Ministry of Coal and Department of Revenue and Forest of concerned State Governments for better coordination,” added the official.
On the sidelines, Power Secretary PK Sinha too called for a meeting on Thursday to put a contingency plan in place to deal with delayed rains, low coal supplies in power plants and better grid management.
The meeting was necessitated in the backdrop of northern Indian states including the national Capital Delhi facing acute power crisis in recent times. Besides poor rains and plunging coal stocks at plants nationwide are likely to worsen north India’s energy requirement.
According to the latest data from the Power Ministry, as many as 21 power projects have less than four days of coal supply, while another 15 projects are running with less than seven days of coal stocks. These plants together produce 55,000 mega watts or more than 20 per cent of the total power generated in India.
Six projects of the NTPC, some of which provide power to northern India including Delhi are running on negligible coal stocks, with supplies at bare minimum to make the plant run. Authorities are also monitoring supplies from the northern grid to states such as Uttar Pradesh and Haryana to prevent a collapse similar to the one in August 2012 that had left more than 600 million people across North and East India powerless for more than 24 hours.