PUNE:
Union
minister of state for railways, coal and mines
Raosaheb Danve on Saturday held the state responsible for the power shortage, asserting that the
MVA
government’s lack of planning forced people to face load shedding.
Danve said the state power minister and other leaders were falsely claiming that
Maharashtra had not received coal and rakes to transport coal. “This is an attempt to cover up their failure and lack of planning. Adequate stock of coal and trains are available. The state government failed to procure coal. It is their responsibility to supply power,” he told reporters.
The Union minister said the Centre had provided coal to the state despite the Maharashtra government’s pending dues of Rs3,000 crore against the coal procurement.
“We did not stop the supply of coal. But it looks like there is total planning failure at the state-level. The MVA government should have done the planning in advance when it is known that the demand for power goes up in summer. We had written in January to the power department to stock up coal. But this is a three-party government. They do not sit together and there is a lack of communication. As the situation is getting challenging, the state government is trying to put the blame on the Centre. This MVA government had put similar blames on the Centre during the Covid-19 pandemic,”
Danve
said.
He said, “The state government now wants to purchase power from outside. We are ready to give permission to the state to procure coal and purchase power to meet the shortage. All we want is the state government makes arrangements to increase the power supply in Maharashtra to minimise the hardships being faced by farmers and industries.”