Tamil Nadu: Stalin seeks full coal quota from PM Modi as Opposition corners govt over power cuts

Even though the coal production is sufficient to meet the increased summer demand for power, the letter said, the same is not getting transported to ports due to the short supply of rakes by railways. “This, in turn, has resulted in the coal stocks of our state’s generation plants reaching critical levels. In the case of TANGEDCO (Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation Limited), 22 railway rakes per day are required for moving 72,000 MTs of daily allotted coal to Paradip and Visakhapatnam ports. However, on an average, only 14 rakes per day are currently being provided by the railways,” Stalin said.

The letter said TANGEDCO has to resort to importing coal at historically high prices to maintain an uninterrupted power supply due to this shortage of domestic coal. “Further, the shortfall in generation is also being filled by buying power at high rates in energy exchanges. Unfortunately, enough power is not available in energy exchanges to meet the requirement of all buying utilities. This serious situation would significantly impact the nascent post-Covid economic recovery and needs to be immediately addressed,” Stalin’s letter said.

In the state Assembly, Opposition AIADMK staged a walkout on Friday in protest against the alleged indifference of the government to the emerging power crisis. “Yet again, power cuts have become the norm in Tamil Nadu, there is already a huge impact on people’s lives,” said Edappadi K Palaniswami after the walkout. He said when the state is required to have about 16,000 to 17,000-megawatt power, the current production is stuck at about 13,100 megawatts as the TANGEDCO and the state government failed to procure and stock coal from the Centre.

“Wrong decisions taken by this government have led to this crisis. When the AIADMK was ruling in the past 10 years, we always had taken advance measures to stock adequate coal to meet the increased energy requirements during the summer. But DMK, which was always notorious for mismanaging and their indifference to the power sector, is now repeating a 2006-11 period (DMK’s previous regime),” Palaniswami said.

In his reply to the Opposition charges, Electricity Minister Senthil Balaji said the state government has already taken steps to stock enough coal for the increased demand during the summer.