Finally, the Narendra Modi government has started pressing the panic buttons after a blazing heatwave rippled across the country — with the misery of the people in at least 5 states aggravated by an acute electricity shortage as coal inventories sank to critical levels in 106 of the 173 thermal power plants. Rising to the peak demand for coal, the Indian Railways swung into action on Friday and cancelled 753 trips by mail, express and passenger trains in a desperate attempt to prioritise the movement of coal rakes. simultaneously, the Centre pleaded with the state governments of coal-starved power plants to start importing coal — the second time it has made such a request in recent weeks.

The spokesperson for the railway board said the train cancellations were temporary and the services would be restored as soon as the situation improved. As per the Railway Board documents showed that 713 train trips had been cancelled in the South East Central Railway and 40 trips in Northern Railway. All this and more, the initiative was designed also to blunt criticism from the power ministry, which has blamed the power crisis on the shortage of rakes for coal transport. In the recent past, power secretary Alok Kumar had said the availability of coal rakes was 6 per cent lower than required. The cancellations of the trains do not really amount to much – and the move is a weak stab at a persistent problem.

Officials in the Railway Board said the trip cancellations involved only 42 trains: 34 in the south and eight in the north. Stating further, officials said that they were taking steps on a “war footing” to cut down the time to transport coal to power plants.

Worst in 6 years

The palpable blame game is likely to ratchet up quickly as data revealed that electricity supply fell short of demand by 1.88 billion units, or 1.6 per cent, during the month of April, making it the worst monthly shortfall in over six years, according to data gleaned from the grid regulator Power System Operation Corporation Ltd (Posoco). The state of Andhra Pradesh has faced the worst peak-hour shortages, followed by Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Haryana. Consumers are facing power cuts ranging from two to eight hours a day.

Members of the opposition in the Parliament said the coal shortage in power plants during a scorching summer was one of the worst examples of mismanagement and bad governance. As a matter of fact, there was no shortage of stocks in the coalfields and the Centre’s failure to provide the logistics for coal supply had created the problem.

Speaking to Hello Vizag, the All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) spokesperson said “there should be shared responsibility and coordination between coal ministry, railway ministry and power ministry to ward off the prevailing crisis of power outages. For the central ministers, passing the buck seems to be order of the day and were shifting the blame to states, which have been slammed for failing to make timely payments to coal companies.

Coal shortage

Coal inventories are at their lowest pre-summer levels in at least nine years. The peak-power demand in India surged to a record high on Thursday and is expected to rise by as much as 8 per cent next month, according to the power ministry. Speaking to Hello Vizag, a senior official of the Railway Board said a total of 533 coal rakes had been pressed into service to move coal to the power plants. Each rake carried around 3,500 tonnes of coal. Nearly 427 rakes were loaded with 1.62 million tonnes of coal for the power sector on Wednesday. And this will continue for at least two more months in an effort to improve stocks at power plants and avoid any crisis in July-August when coal mining is badly affected by rain.

The public-sector miner Coal India had loaded 271.2 rakes per day on an average during fiscal 2022 and this was 12.3 per cent higher than the average of 241.4 rakes loaded in FY21. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior official of Coal India said that If more rakes are made available at the loading points, this will give an impetus to the coal offtake for thermal power plants from Coal India mines. Also, a combination of rail-cum-road movement could lead to a faster coal stock-up at power plants, he added

The public-sector miner Coal India had loaded 271.2 rakes per day on an average during fiscal 2022 and this was 12.3 per cent higher than the average of 241.4 rakes loaded in FY21. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior official of Coal India said that If more rakes are made available at the loading points, this will give an impetus to the coal offtake for thermal power plants from Coal India mines. Also, a combination of rail-cum-road movement could lead to a faster coal stock-up at power plants, he added