In line with its poll promise to focus on power and infrastructure development, the BJP-led NDA government is likely to provide fuel linkage to a number of stuck private sector projects.
Once done, the projects concerned would be able to get supply of coal from Coal India (CIL). The projects that would benefit are Adani Power?s 1,320 MW Kawai project, Bajaj Hindusthan?s 1,980 MW Lalitpur project, a few units of GMR’s Chhattisgarh project and Monnet Ispat’s 1,050 MW Malibrahmani project in Odisha.
Sources in the government said the power and coal ministry, which now has a common minister in Piyush Goyal, would move a note for the Cabinet seeking long-term fuel linkage by CIL for power projects totalling 4,660 MW that is either commissioned or close to commissioning and have long-term power purchase agreement in place. These projects are without any coal linkage and have not been included in the list of 78,000 MW of power projects getting commissioned up to March 2015 with which CIL is signing FSAs.
Coal linkage for unlinked projects with capacity of 4,660 MW was also approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs under the UPA government. But it was left to CIL to consider coal for these projects purely on the basis of availability and after meeting the needs of 78,000 MW of projects.
The NDA government may now ask CIL to sign long-term FSA with these unlinked projects as well and meet the additional fuel requirements from incremental production of 2014-15 and coal left unused from existing FSAs due to projects not conforming to stated milestone.
