Mumbai : A day after the Supreme Court cancelled allocation of 214 coal blocks, state power generator Mahagenco Thursday said it will seek Centre’s intervention to ensure coal linkage for its plants which are linked with some of these blocks.
“Mahagenco is making efforts to assess and minimise the impact of the Supreme Court judgement to ensure that the state-owned generating PSU utilises the available resources in the best manner possible,” a Mahagenco official said in a statement.
The court, inter alia, has made a distinction between state power generators and those which obtained coal blocks with plans to launch power projects later or those PSUs which had formed joint ventures with private parties. “As Mahagenco is a PSU engaged in power generation which has not entered into any JV, the Centre is trying to formulate a mechanism to help such state power generation utilities,” the statement said.
The official further said the government had told the court that it would formulate a policy soon for the power generating companies.
“This decision will hopefully help Mahagenco,” he said.
The power generator has also requested the government to sanction tapering linkage as the Macchakata coal mine in Odisha is scheduled to begin production in 2016.
“Macchakata coal mine is one of the 214 blocks, which is expected to begin production only in 2016. In view of this, Mahagenco had already urged the Centre to allocate tapering linkage for its units which were linked to this mine. This request was approved by the power ministry which has now forwarded it to the coal ministry,” the official added. -PTI
