Coal For Less Than 2 Days In Power Plants, Maharashtra Blames Centre

The overall power crisis in Maharashtra is far greater than just Mumbai, which has been largely protected so far, Maharashtra power minister Nitin Raut said today. There is a shortage of 20,000 lakh metric tonnes and key thermal power plants in the state will run out of coal in less than 2 days, the minister told NDTV in an exclusive interview.

Declaring that the supplies from the Coal India Limited have been erratic, he accused the Centre of not helping the state.

Maharashtra, he said, is facing "power politics". "Because Maharashtra is in the hands of the MVA (Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi) government, the government of India is not cooperating properly with Maharashtra and that's why the shortage is fabricated here," he said.

"The coal shortage is there. There is no question about it. Because the agreement which we have with CIL (Coal India Limited) after the bridge linkage is also there and some MO is also there with WCL, ACCl, ECL," he said.

"We will have a contract of 10 lakh million metric ton. The shortage is of about 60 to 70 per cent," the minister said.  

"We should get (the whole quota) but they are supplying only 85 per cent. So there is a shortage of 50 per cent coal. After that also, our power plants are generating power and improving their production by 8.56 per cent. We are trying to provide power at the peak period for the people of Maharashtra," he said.

The Coal India Limited, he said, "is not giving supply properly. They are not giving the quality of coal in supply... in many areas there is a shortage of racks also".  

Parts of the country's financial capital Mumbai and its surrounding areas had an hour-long blackout on Monday. There was a power cut again today in pockets of the city and its suburbs.

The minister today said the situation in Mumbai is "under control". Monday's outage, he said was because of technical problems.