As the country scrambles to refill depleted supplies at power plants in order to prevent a full-blown power crisis, the Indian Railways plans to cancel over 650 passenger trains to allow for speedier coal carriage movement. On Friday, protests protesting power outages erupted outside Punjab Power Minister Harbhajan Singh's home.
According to railway sources, 657 passenger trains, including 500 mail and express train journeys and 148 commuter train excursions, will be cancelled to allow coal rakes to move more quickly. Over the following two months, the railways intend to increase the number of coal rakes passing through.
According to Bloomberg, Gaurav Krishna Bansal, an executive director of Indian Railways, said, "The measure is temporary, and passenger services would be restored as soon as the situation normalises." According to him, the state-run operator is attempting to reduce the time it takes to transport coal to power plants.
Satyendar Jain, the Delhi Power Minister, stated on Friday that because the entire country is experiencing power outages owing to a coal shortage with no backup, the best way to address the crisis would be for the Centre to give more coal. He claimed that power cannot be conserved and that Delhi does not have enough coal for the next 21 days.
On Thursday, Jain convened an emergency meeting at the Delhi Secretariat to discuss the coal shortfall and submitted a letter to the Centre requesting additional coal for thermal power plants.
The Delhi government claimed that disruptions in power supply from the Dadri and Unchahar thermal power plants could affect the national capital's 24-hour power supply to the Delhi Metro, hospitals, and other key institutions. According to the National Power Portal's daily coal report, coal is in short supply at many of the National Thermal Power Corporation's power plants (NTPC).
On Friday, Bihar's power minister, Bijendra Prasad Yadav, also brought up the subject of coal scarcity. "There is a shortage of roughly 1000 MW, but it will be resolved in a day or two," he added, adding that conversations with the central government had also taken place.
However, Union Power Ministry sources told News18 if states are facing a power crisis it is because of coal supply issues. “States have not released payment for coal leading to this crisis. There is no problem with power plants… They continue to function."
The Delhi government has informed that only one day’s coal stock is left at the Dadri-II power plant, Unchahar power plant has two days’ stock, three-and-a-half days’ stock is left in Kahalgaon, Farakka has five days’ stock, while Jhajjar (Aravalli) has seven to eight days’ stock left with it.
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