Railway and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal at the parliament house in Delhi. (Express photo by Prem Nath Pandey)
Just a day after Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi over shortage of coal in power plants and the capital facing a potential blackout, Union Coal Minister Piyush Goyal said that Kejriwal is trying to hide his own failures in the power situation this summer. “Increased demand has already been met by coal and railway ministeries,” he added.
Kejriwal on Tuesday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting him to direct the Railways to provide rakes for transporting coal to power plants in Delhi-NCR, which is facing “alarming level” of coal shortage. “Demand for coal was very very low from Dadri plant last year. Delhi was not consuming the amount of power it thought it would. Suddenly they increased demand for more coal, which has been met by Coal and Railways ministries,” said Goyal.
Kejriwal said thermal power stations in the national capital region — Dadri I & II, Jhajjar and Badarpur — are facing “acute coal shortage” for the last many days and at present, all of them are operating on a day ahead basis as coal stock is not sufficient for even a day of full generation. Responding to Kejriwal’s demands, Goyal said that the Badarpur power plant was never running whole of last year. “Suddenly there was a demand for about 1.5 rakes of coal a day which was met,” Goyal said.
Kejriwal said that Delhi is reeling under severe heat wave conditions and peak demand has already crossed 6200 MW and is expected to touch 7000 MW soon. The chief minister also wrote to Lt Governor Anil Baijal seeking his intervention in taking up the matter with the central ministries to resolve this crisis-like situation at the earliest. Delhi Power Minister Satyendar Jain had last week flagged the issue and also written to Goyal, requesting him to issue necessary instruction to help “resolve the crisis”.