Delhi receives half of power supply Centre adamant on not acknowledging coal shortage: Delhi Govt

New Delhi, Oct 11 (FN Representative) Delhi Power Minister Satyendar Jain said on Monday that the national capital received half of the electricity supply in the day even as the Centre continues to deny coal shortage in the country. Addressing a press conference, the minister said Delhi used to get about 4000 MegaWatt (MW) of electricity from the Central Government’s National Thermal Power Corporation Limited (NTPC), but today they are not able to supply even half of it. “The demand for electricity in Delhi at present is low. At one time, the electricity demand was more than 7300 MW, which has come down to 4562 MW in today’s time. Even after the demand is low, we have to buy electricity at the rate of Rs 17 to 20. The Delhi government has its most power purchase agreements with NTPC, but they have cut power production at their plants by 50%. “According to the agreement, 85% of the time in a year NTPC has to provide a complete power supply and 15% of the time it can go up to 55%. But this cannot be done for all the plants at the same time. Usually, NTPC gives about 4000 MW of electricity to Delhi, but in today’s date it is not able to supply even half of it,” he said further.

Calling it a matter of concern, he questioned the Centre about their denial of acknowledging the coal crisis in the country. “If the Central Government is saying that there is no power crisis, then why did CM Yogi Adityanath write a letter to the Central Government? It is obvious that the letter was written because the problem exists,” he stated. Jain’s statement came as a response to the Union Energy Minister R K Singh’s comment who said a day ago that “unnecessary panic” was being created over the issue. Singh had informed that the country is four days ahead of the average requirement of coal per day and no shortage of coal has been reported from the power generation plants. However, Jain said that “no power plant should have coal stock of less than 15 days”. “Right now, most of the plants have 2-3 days of stock left. All NTPC plants are working at 50 to 55% capacity. The Central Government should explain that despite this why is there a coal crunch in the county” he asked