West Bengal is reeling under the dual impact of heat wave and power crisis. For the last one week, a heat wave is blowing in the southern Bengal pushing the mercury to over 45 degree Celsius at several places. The deaths were reported from Purulia, Bankura and Howrah districts today. The massive shortfall in power generation forced the consumers to suffer the heat without electricity for hours.
Faced with power crisis, which is unprecedented in recent times, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had to admit that the government could not provide immediate relief to the people. Today, according to West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (WBSEDCL), the shortfall of power in the state stood at 550 MW. In the past one week, the shortfall hovered between 800 to 1200 MW.
While the power generating agencies in the state are blaming shortage of coal as the major reason for their poor performance, the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) has been worst victim of systematic loot of coal.
DVC has been compelled to shut down one, sometimes two units at its Mejia Thermal Power Plant for paucity of coal. The Bengal Emta Company, which operates a number of captive mines for power plants, is having similar experiences at its Barjor mines at Birbhum district, where hundreds of people are regularly looting high grade coal from its sidings.
According to Bengal Emta director Bikash Mukherjee, despite having a number of meetings with the state and district administration, things did not change.
On April 1, the loading of coal and related operations had to be stopped at Barjor mines on the advice of the district administration. On April 8, when the operations resumed, they had to face similar loots.
"All these are happening in front of police," said Bikash Mukherjee. Bengal Emta started dispatching coal from Barjor mine on 16 June, 2009. "Because of the mass looting of coal, the company cound never operate at its full capacity. While the total number of rakes supplied from this mine in the past 10 months was only 33, it could easily go up to 170-175 rakes," he added. According to his estimates, considering that one rake of wagons could deliver up to 3,700 tonnes of coal, during this last 10 months the Bengal Emta could not supply around 4 lakh tonnes of coal to the power stations.
The DVC's Mejia power plant has six units (210MW X4 and 250MW X2) and two more units (500MW X 2) are now under construction. Of the six operating units, the management has been keeping at least one, sometimes two units, shut down.
