Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh has decided to shelve the plan to import coal after criticism from different corners including the trade unions of the electricity department and the opposition Congress, sources said on Monday. Sources in the energy department said that the Centre would provide coal to the state to generate electricity.
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A senior official of the MP Power Generating Company (Genco) said that Coal India would provide the state with imported coal and that the state unit would not import it. The MP Genco had invited tenders to import 7.5 lakh metric tonnes of coal and, according to an estimate, the cost of the coal would have been Rs 976 crore. That would have raised the cost of power in the state, and the common man, already bearing the brunt of inflation, would have been in deep trouble, sources said.
As the Genco had invited tenders for importing coal, the Congress and various trade unions of the electricity department criticised the government and demanded a probe into the coal shortage which halted power generation in the state. A few trade unions even threatened to launch an agitation against the import of coal. Nonetheless, the main reason for putting the coal import plan on hold is the ensuing Panchayat elections, Congress leaders said.
They said that if the power tariff was increased because of import of coal, the ruling party would have been in trouble in the Panchayat elections being held from June 25 and in the assembly elections next year.
When the state government recently proposed to raise power tariff, former chief minister Kamal Nath wrote to the Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan to withdraw the planned hike in electricity tariff.
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He wrote: “I request you to give relief to every section of society in this time of extreme inflation and revoke the increase in the tariff of electricity.” Nath also said that during the Congress rule, more than 9.7 million families were given 100 units of power for just Rs 100
