By Express News Service
Amid the increasing concerns over coal shortage, the union coal minister Pralhad Joshi is visiting the headquarter of the South Eastern Coalfields Ltd (one of the subsidiaries of Coal India Limited-CIL) at Bilaspur and its coalfields on Wednesday.
According to the SECL officials, the union minister will land directly at Chakarbhata airport in Bilaspur at around noon.
Besides reviewing the mining and production works with the senior SECL officials, Joshi is likely to proceed to Korba coal mines by chopper for ground inspection.
The union minister had early this week claimed that despite adverse circumstances the country has recorded the highest coal production in October so far. “The situation will normalise in the next 3-4 days”, Joshi affirmed.
The CIL chairman Pramod Agrawal will accompany the minister.
“Coal production was impacted owing to the heavy rains in September. But the output has been augmented after the directive from the government to ensure the power sector gets sufficient supply”, said Sanish Chandra, public relation officer-SECL.
SECL has set the target of coal output at 14.73 million ton for October month and till now the production touched 2.95 million ton.
Most of the thermal power stations in Chhattisgarh had recently lowered their production fearing fewer despatches of coal supply from the mines and the plants in the state have been cited to have been left with 3-6 days of coal stocks.
CM Bhupesh Baghel said that though there is no serious power crisis or shortage of coal in the state, but the situation is being closely monitored. Baghel has asked SECL to ensure the regular requisite daily coal supply on priority to the thermal plants based in Chhattisgarh.