New Delhi: Around 42 passenger trains have been cancelled across India to allow faster movement of coal carriages to tackle critically low stocks at power plants in the middle of blackouts and outages in many states.
The halt came as thermal plants reported expediated depletion of coal.
The Railways is trying to take steps “at war-footing” to transport coal and also cut down the time it takes to move coal to power plants, officials said.
The move (to cancel trains) is temporary and passenger services will be restored as soon as the situation normalizes, Gaurav Krishna Bansal, an executive director at Indian Railways said.
According to the Central Electricity Authority’s (CEA) daily coal stock report, 56 of 165 thermal power stations are left with 10% or less coal. At least 26 have less than five per cent stock left.
Outages have been impacting industrial sector negatively. Threatening the economic rise as the govt tackles hked feul prices attributed to the Russia- Ukraine war.