Acute power shortage may be in store for consumers with central government on Thursday admitting that 53 power plants across the country were stressed for want of fuel.
The amount stuck in these power plants is a whooping Rs 1.54 lakh crore.
Union power minister Piyush Goyal told Lok Sabha that the government has identified 53 power projects belonging to both public and private sector companies that are stressed for want of fuel both coal and gas.
As many as 25 power projects are stressed due to non-availability of coal, putting at stake an amount of Rs 89,757.37 crore. Out of these six projects are in Maharashtra and three in Karnataka. Adani's 1,320 mw Tirora TPP power plant in Maharashtra, already commissioned at a cost of Rs 9,631 crore, is also running out of coal. The case is same for Jindal's Tamnar TPP power plant of 1,200 mw capacity in Maharastra coming at a cost of Rs 4,277 crore. Out of 33 gas-based power plants running out of fuel two are in Maharashtra, 11 are in Gujarat and 15 in Andhra Pradesh. The amount at stake in gas based stressed projects comes to Rs 64,431 crore.
The minister said the government was exploring various options including financial relief, but hastened to add that so far no specific direction has gone to banks and public sector companies to float a "re-construction fund".
The government's another worry is that the RSS-affiliated Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) has thrown a spanner opposing the coal mines Bill. The bill was supposed to replace the ordinance it had promulgated last month for auction of 204 of the 218 coal blocks that were cancelled en masse by the Supreme Court in September.
Though, he assured that the ordinance stipulating the methodology to be followed for auction/allocation of cancelled coal blocks, the BMS push to reconsider ordinance has put the government on back-foot. The BMS did not join Citu, Intuc and Hind Mazdoor Sabha for a nationwide strike on November 24 after Piyush Goyal agreed to consider their objections to the ordinance and rework it before presenting in Parliament.
The trade unions are up in arms against what they call the "creeping privatisation regime" that the government is trying to bring in as BMS general secretary Virjesh Upadhyay blamed the government for not creating adequate infrastructure of the state-owned Coal India Ltd (CIL) for enhanced coal production and giving the excuse of CIL working at an optimal capacity to encourage private companies explore the country's black gold.
Right now, CIL alone can excavate and sell coal to the end-users, but it has not increased its production over the years, while the Supreme Court's judgment cancelling all coal block allocations also debars the state governments from selling any coal.
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