Congress trolls BJP govt for electricity crisis

|HT|

The Congress party on Friday took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government for the electricity crisis and alleged that coal is not being transported to plants, which is why the country is facing power shortage. The party also demanded that the “artificial” power crisis should be immediately resolved. “Today the condition is that there are coal plants with 72-thousand-megawatt capacity that are lying barren because there is no coal. It’s not like there is no coal in the country. There is. But Modi doesn’t think it is necessary to transport it to the plants,” Congress spokesperson Gourav Vallabh said.

“India is capable enough of producing electricity and has raw material too, but Modi ji could not even transport coal from coal mines to power plants,” he added.

The country has been reeling under a coal crisis that aggravated between October and November last year as well, owing to extended monsoons and an increase in the demand for domestic coal over expensive imported coal. The crisis triggered power supply issues in several states and union territories such as Delhi, Maharashtra and Gujarat where distribution companies (discoms) had to resort to scheduled power cuts. Mocking the Centre, Vallabh said, no matter what we (Opposition) question the government over, they only have one response— “It is a state matter”. “If everything is left to the states, then what can you (Centre) be held responsible for?” the Congress spokesperson added. On behalf of the party, Vallabh demanded that the electricity crisis be resolved immediately and that people should be given 24/7 power supply this summer.

Union Minister RK Singh, on Thursday, blamed states for electricity outages in some parts of the country amid rising power demand in the face of an uncharacteristic heatwave sweeping the country, saying the problems were not due to a shortage of coal but because of non-payment of dues to Coal India Limited (CIL), delay in lifting coal, and “improper planning”. Bharatiya Janata Party spokespersons were unavailable for comment on the matter.

India on Thursday met a record peak power demand of 204.653 GW — the highest the country has ever met (overall) — according to the power ministry, which has projected the demand to further peak at about 215GW in the coming months.

According to a Bloomberg report, India cancelled some passenger trains to allow coal carriages to move faster as the country replenishes its depleting inventory at power plants to avoid a power crisis.

(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)