New Delhi: Union Minister for Power, R K Singh and Union Minister for Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw held a meeting here today to discuss short term and long term strategies for dealing with increasing power demand.
Power Secretary, Alok Kumar, Coal Secretary, A.K Jain and senior officials from Ministry of Power, Ministry of Coal and Ministry of Railways were present. Representatives from Coal and Power PSUs and states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra joined virtually.
Mr.Singh urged all stakeholders at the Centre and state level to work hand in hand for unhindered power supply.
He urged the Power Generation companies to own freight rakes under the scheme of Ministry of Railways to deal with logistic constraints in coal supply.
Issues discussed included increasing operational efficiency for loading and unloading of coal, increasing percentage of rakes allotment for Power sector, and other logistics issues.
In the meantime in order to ensure swift supply of coal across power plants, additional trains and rakes by Indian Railways have been initiated to augment transportation of coal through its network. Indian Railways has ramped up the coal transportation resulting in 32% more coal freight loading between the months of September 2021 – March 2022.
There has also been an increase in 10% freight, by efficiently mobilizing resources after April 2022.
During the year 2021-22 Indian Railways has augmented the transportation of Coal through Railways by a record 111 Million tonnes and loaded a record 653 Million Tonnes of coal as compared to 542 Million tonnes in the previous year i.e. a growth of 20.4 %.
Further during the period September 2021 to March 2022 loading of coal to power sector was augmented by 32% in just 2 quarters.
In April 2022 , IR has taken many steps to prioritize the loading of coal to power sector which has led to increase in supply of coal of more than 10 % within one week time.