NEWS

Union Home Minister Amit Shah met his cabinet colleagues in charge of the coal and power ministries on Monday amid concerns of an electricity shortage in many parts of the country because of inadequate supplies of coal.

During the hour-long meeting, the three ministers were believed to have discussed the availability of coal to power plants and the current power demands.

The meeting was attended by senior bureaucrats as well as officials from the state-run energy conglomerate NTPC Limited.

Despite the Swachha Bharat initiative which has seen been widely publicized, it has been tough to bring about behavioural changes in some people who are used to spit in public. They probably do not realize the magnitude of damage they do. Here's an estimate to wonder - the Indian Railways spend a whopping amount of about Rs 12000 crore every year just to clean the 'gutkha' stains.

Despite the COVID-19 guidelines which hugely stresses maintaining personal hygiene and cleanliness of the surrounding, the habitual offenders have not mended their ways and the problem is still festering.

However, the railways in a bid to deal with it have come up with a new solution. The plan is to install spitter kiosks at the station premises which can be used by the general public.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday spoke to his UK counterpart Boris Johnson over phone and had an extensive discussion on several issues related to climate change in the context of the forthcoming annual climate change summit, COP26, to be in Glasgow, Scotland, from October 31 to November 12.

"The two leaders had an extensive discussion on issues related to climate change. Prime Minister Modi conveyed India's commitment to climate action, as seen in its ambitious target for expansion of renewable energy and the recently-announced National Hydrogen Mission," a release from the PMO said.

While maintaining that coal stock at power plants was sufficient enough for four days, the Union Coal Ministry said on Sunday that there was ample coal available in the country to meet the demands of thermal power plants.

The Ministry said that Coal India Ltd has about 400 lakh tones of coal available, which is being supplied to power plants. “Any fear of disruption in power supply is entirely misplaced,” the Ministry claimed.

“The domestic coal based power generation has grown by nearly 24% in this year based on a robust supply from the coal companies,” the Ministry said. The daily average coal requirement at the power plants is about 18.5 Lakh tonnes of coal per day whereas the daily coal supply has been around 17.5 lakh tonnes per day, it said.