State-owned power firms including India’s largest power producer, NTPC, have been given a month’s time by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) to sign fuel supply agreements (FSAs) with Coal India Ltd, failing which the agreements would be withdrawn.
The directive came during a meeting
under the chairmanship of principal secretary to Prime Minister Pulok Chatterjee on Monday. “The PMO has asked power ministry to direct power PSUs to sign fuel supply agreements (FSAs) with CIL within a month from today (Monday), else fuel supply pacts would be withdrawn,” a government official said after the meeting.
The meeting was attended by coal secretary SK Srivastava, power secretary P Uma Shankar and Coal India CMD S Narsing Rao among others.
NTPC is among companies that have raised concerns about the quality of coal. Recently, NTPC CMD Arup Roy Choudhury had said that “the quality of coal that we received from Coal India is poor and we have informed the power ministry about that.”
The PMO had in October asked power companies to sign fuel supply pacts with CIL by November-end even if they don't have binding pacts for sale of electricity. Monday’s meeting was convened by the PMO to sort out issues that were preventing signing of FSAs.