Chandigarh, October 15
Even as the coal shortage has hit power generation across the country, Haryana is in deep trouble with coal stocks in the state down to a day’s reserves at the Panipat plant. Power plants at Hisar and Yamunanagar have only reserves to last three days.

Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda has spoken to Union Coal minister Sripakash Jaiswal asking for more coal reserves to keep the plants operative. Power Minister, Capt Ajay Singh Yadav, too, has written to the Coal Minister, the Power Minister and the Railways Minister seeking better coal linkages given the fast-depleting reserves.

“The situation at our plants is very critical. Panipat has only a day’s reserves while the two plants at Yamunanagar and Hisar, with two units each, have two additional days’ reserves. This, in no way, would suffice for the demand of nearly 1100 lakh units a day. We are trying our best to build up reserves,” Capt Yadav said.

The state is already reeling under major power cuts of five to seven hours, which would have to be extended further in case the reserves do not arrive on time. The Managing Director, Haryana Power Generation Corporation Limited, Sanjeev Kaushal, said though coal reserves at the plants had heavily depleted, the state is expecting better supplies over the next couple of days.

“Though the reserves have depleted substantially over the last few days, we are expecting about nine rakes, that comes to about 58 wagons, by Monday. Once those arrive, things may begin to look up a little. We are regularly in touch with the Coal India Limited and its subsidiaries while the government, too, has taken up the matter with the Centre,” Kaushal added.

Sources said against a requirement of nearly 4800 MW, the state has a supply of about 4000 MW. Officials say the distribution companies could not meet the shortfall despite the facility to overdraw from the grid to avoid UI rates as high as Rs 17 to 20 per unit against a supply rate of Rs 4.35 per unit. This not only manifests itself by way of long power cuts but was the consequence of heavy overdrawing by Uttar Pradesh, sources said.