Cuttack: The Orissa High Court has approved the arrangement for coal supply to Nalco’s captive power plant at Angul and Damanjodi refinery.
As per the arrangement, 11,000 tonne to 14,000 tonne will be supplied to the captive power plant and 3,000 tonne to the refinery. The coal requirement of Nalco’s captive power plant at Angul would be met by a combination of supply mostly through MGR (a dedicated rail line connecting the pithead with the smelter plant) system and road transport.
The Indian Railways will continue supply of 50-60 rakes per day to Talcher coalfield area and MCL will provide 0.8 rakes daily to the refinery to ensure continuous supply of coal to Nalco plants.
Hearing a petition on coal crisis in Nalco, a division bench comprising chief justice S Muralidhar and Justice RK Patnaik approved the arrangement that was decided at a meeting attended by secretaries of Union ministry of coal, power and mines, chairman of Railway Board, CMDs of Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd (MCL) and Nalco.
“In order to ensure that the solution is implemented immediately, the court considers it appropriate not to continue with the interim order already passed and to await the result of implementation of the arrangement,” TNIE quoted the Bench as saying.
The court had on Monday issued orders for the mediation. The arrangement was communicated to the court along with a copy of the minutes of the meeting by the Assistant Solicitor General of India, Prasanna Kumar Parhi.
Earlier, the bench had said the arrangement would be considered as “an emergency mission” that has been agreed upon by several of the stakeholders and the large amount of coal required to be transported as part of it should not face any resistance from the district administration.
