Thaindian News

New Delhi, Feb 1 (IANS) A governmental panel, headed by Pulok Chatterji, principal secretary to the prime minister, Wednesday directed Coal India to streamline supply so that production at major power plants was not affected.

The committee of secretaries (CoS), constituted last month, met to sort out the issues affecting the power sector, especially the shortage of coal and gas.

As per the committee’s recommendations, Coal India will be penalised if its production falls below 80 percent of the full quantity of the letter of allocation.

Sources said the committee also proposed to incentivise the state-owned Coal India if its output rises above 90 percent of the total allocated level.

This was the first meeting of the committee which was set up by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after his meeting with heads of top power producing companies.

Besides Chatterji, secretaries from the departments of power, coal, petroleum, expenditure, commerce, steel, environment and forest are part of the committee.

Top industrialists, including Tata Sons Chairman Ratan Tata, Reliance Group chairman Anil Ambani, Tata group vice chairman Cyrus Mistry, Jindal Steel and Power’s Naveen Jindal, Essar Group’s Prashant Ruia, GMR’s G.M. Rao, Gautam Adani of the Adani Group and Lanco Infratech’s Madhusudan Rao, had attended the meeting with the prime minister that took place Jan 18.

Coal fuels more than half of the power generation in the country. Although India has 10 percent of the world’s coal reserves, miners have found it difficult to get approvals given the time it takes for environmental clearances and land acquisition approvals.