An inter-ministerial meeting will be convened shortly to sort out the intractable issues in the implementation of the Union cabinet decision seeking to ensure supply of quality coal to three Delhi-based thermal power plants by the end of this year.
The decision lays down that all thermal power plants in the country, located in the specified areas, use coal washed down to 34 per cent positively from June 1, 2001 onwards.
However, Delhi has been made an exception in view of its alarming air pollution level. The government, therefore, wants the decision to be enforced in the Capital with effect from January 1, 1999.
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The practical problems in implementing the decision include adequate infrastructure for the beneficiation of the large quantities of coal, funds for the beneficiation plants, and transport bottlenecks. More importantly, a question mark hovers over whether the Delhi power plants and the Delhi Vidyut Board would be in a position to pay a higher price for the quality supplies in view of their critical financial positions.
Delhi has three power plants Indraprashtha (277.5 mw), Rajghat (149 mw) and Badarpur (705 mw). Except for the Badarpur plant, which has an average plant load factor of 68 per cent, Rajghat is working at 61 per cent and Indraprastha at a poor 49 per cent.
Their financial position is so bad that they have been regularly defaulting on payments to both the coal supplier Coal India (CIL) and the transporter, which is mainly the Railways.
The problems notwithstanding, supplies have to be arranged within the next 12 months in keeping with the cabinet decision. The environment ministry is all for enforcement of the norms and any violation could be penalised under the pollution control laws.
For the desired quantity of the beneficiated coal, supplies would need to be arranged from the Giddi washery, where a new coal washery could be set up with a capacity of two million tonnes on conversion of the existing coking coal washery. Another source could be the Piparwar plant, which has 5 million tonne capacity, and which could spare a surplus two million tonnes for the Delhi plants.
The power ministry is, however, insisting that the surplus from Piparwar be routed to feed the NTPCs Unchahar power plant. The NTPC also owns the Dadri plant which, like Unchahar, is in dire need of washed coal.
Thus, new linkages to the Delhi plants would mean disrupting the supply lines to Unchahar and Dadri.
The railway ministry feels that it would be convenient for it if supplies were linked to Dadri and Unchahar as the required wagon unloading facilities were available at these places, which is not the case with any of the Delhi plants.
Most important, CIL has already expressed its inability to mobilise the quantum of funds needed to set up the washeries.