Two days after the Supreme Court declared that all 218 coal block allocations made from 1993 to 2011 illegal and arbitrary, Union Coal Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday said opening a number of new coal mines was the only way forward to tackle the power crisis in the country.
“Majority of power plants in recent times are dependent on imported coal and prices of the imports have gone up recently,” Mr. Goyal said in Mumbai while speaking to reporters after launching the Prime Minister Jan Dhan Yojana.
The next court hearing on Sept. 1 would give a final solution to this problem, he added. On whether the country faces a possible breakdown of power plants, he said he wasn’t aware of any such possibility. Mr. Goyal, however, added that while the coal production had remained static for the last five years, the demand had been increased by more than 50 p.c.
