Minister of state for coal Santosh Bagrodia has denied the claims made by the thermal power companies of an acute coal shortage.

Follwing the complaints of a coal scarcity, Bagrodia undertook a quick review of the production and dispatch performance of coal companies and issued a statement refuting that there was any shortage in the availability of coal.

Instead, the minister said the power companies were to blame for the shortage due to their own shortcomings.

''The power plants should have coal stock for 21 days, but none of the plants maintain it. Therefore from time to time we talk of shortage of coal,'' Bagrodia said.

Acording to the coal minstry's statement, CIL is required to supply a planned target of 292.50 million tonnes to power utilities in 2008-09, which is around 12 million tonnes more than what it supplied in 2007-08. It said that it had supplied 11 per cent more coal to the power sector in july than what it did last year.

The ministry said that the overall supply to power sector from Coal India Ltd has shown a growth of 3.4 per cent during April-July, 2008 over the same period last year. "Overall, both Coal India Limited and Singareni Collieries Company Limited have achieved 98.7 per cent of AAP dispatch targets to power sector utilities."

It said that for National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) plants, which are operating at relatively high plant load factor, CIL has achieved 106 per cent of dispatch target upto July 2008. "Thus, despite severe constraints in some of the Coal Companies on account of unprecedented rains, frequent law & order problems, transport bottlenecks etc. - there has been a 6.4 per cent growth in coal production in CIL during April-July, 2008 as compared to the same period last year."

The statement said that the Central Electrical Authority had said there has been an overall increase of 2.5 per cent in (power) generation during April-July, 2008, the coal-based generation has shown a growth of 5 per cent over the corresponding period of last year. Moreover, no generation loss has been reported in the monthly 'energy generation report' for the month of July 2008 on account of coal shortage. Coal companies have sufficient pithead stocks to meet the ''normative requirement'' of the power plants provided.

Although the minister has rebuffed all charges of coal shortage, a sub group of the 'infrastructure constraint review committee' of the government that reviewed the situation has found coal stock position of as many as 21 power plants in the country as ''critical''.

The sub group, which held its review meeting a fortnight ago, said the situation, if not rectified, the scarcity could lead to severe power shortage in the coming months. The power plants said to be suffering from an acute coal scarcity include, Faridabad, Kota and Suratgarh, Harudaganj, Panki, Prchihha, Gandhi Nagar, Wanakbori, Korba East, Koradih, Nasik, Bhusawal, Parli and Chandrapur, Dahanu, Ennore and North Chennai, Farakka and Kahalgaon, Mejia and Sagardighi (Unit I).

Acording to reports, super-thermal stations which form the backbone of the country's central and eastern grids like NTPC's 3,260-MW Vindhyachal station in Madhya Pradesh, the 1,340-MW Kahalgaon station in Bihar and the 1,600-MW Farakka station in West Bengal have extremely low stocks of coal.

The reasons attributed for the shortage of coal was the exhaustion of existing source, lack of coal imports, slow evacuation from ports and pitheads and transport bottlenecks.

India's current coal reserves are estimated at 256 billion tonnes, out of which 445 million tonnes per annum is mined. Currently thermal power plants generate power from 67 per cent of India's total using coal as a raw material.

The Maharashtra State Power Generation Company Ltd has said that the quality of coal supplied to it is of poor quality as one of the reason for heavy load shedding in Maharashtra even after the revival of monsoon.