Coal shortage threatens Delhi with Blackout, Arvind Kejriwal seeks Narendra Modi's "personal intervention"

Kejriwal on Saturday wrote a letter to Prime Minister Modi and requested the latter's office for diversion of adequate coal and gas to power plants supplying electricity to Delhi.

"Delhi could face a power crisis. I am personally keeping a close watch over the situation. We are trying our best to avoid it. In the meanwhile, I wrote a letter to Hon’ble PM seeking his personal intervention," he posted on Twitter.

In the letter, Kejriwal stated that the power plants are facing a shortage of coal for the third month in a row which started in August this year.

Sharing the acute shortage of coal in central power generation plants, Kejriwal informed Modi in the letter that one power plant has run out of coal while four others have only a few days of stock with them.

NTPC Dada Jhajjar and DVC power plants have only one day of coal stock left while the Mejja plant has run out of it. Singrauli plant has only four days of coal stock.

The CERC Tariff Regulations (Regulation 34) mandates the generating stations to maintain a stock of 10 days and 20 days for pithead and non-pithead stations respectively, Kejriwal noted in the letter.

Delhi CM also said that it is essential to maintain an uninterrupted power supply in Delhi which is catering to strategic and important installations of national importance apart from supplying power to essential services like the cold chains for the vaccination drives, hospitals, health care centres, COVID Care Centres etc.