Amid rising power demand, govt discusses strategies to increase coal transport

Union Minister for Power R K Singh and Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw held a meeting on Monday to discuss strategies for dealing with increasing power demand across the country.

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 in the meeting, along with representatives from coal and power PSUs.

R.K Singh asked all stakeholders at the Centre and state level to work together for unhindered power supply. "He also urged the Power Gencos 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," the government's press release said.

Amid coal shortages reported in the country, the Indian Railways also deployed additional rakes to transport coal to power plants. Indian Railways has ramped up the coal transportation resulting in 32 per cent more coal freight loading between September 2021 and March 2022.

There has also been an increase in 10 per cent freight, by efficiently mobilizing resources after April 2022, the railway ministry informed.

The movement of coal trains has been prioritized and each train is being intensively monitored during the entire cycle. The transit time of coal trains to long-distance power plants has been reduced significantly by 12-36 per cent.

Indian Railways has prioritized the movement of coal to long-distance power plants as the average lead of coal trains has increased by 7 per cent in the last 5 days as compared to the average leads of 1st to 10th April.