Union Interior Minister Amit Shah met with his cabinet colleagues for the coal and energy ministries on Monday.
During the hour-long meeting, the three ministers are said to have discussed the availability of coal for power plants and the current demand for electricity.
The meeting was attended by senior bureaucrats and officials from the state energy company NTPC Limited.
Several states have warned of blackouts despite central government assurances that India has enough coal reserves to meet the needs of its power plants to allay fears of impending blackouts in New Delhi and other cities.
The current fuel supply at coal-fired power plants is around 7.2 million tonnes, enough for four days, the Coal Ministry said in a statement Sunday.
State-owned mining giant Coal India also has more than 40 million tonnes of supplies that are supplied to power plants.
“Any fear of a power outage is completely out of the question,” the ministry said.
The clarification came a day after Delhi’s Prime Minister Arvind Kejriwal warned of an impending power crisis in the megacity of more than 20 million people.
Several regions in India have been hit by supply shortages in recent months, causing utilities to resort to unplanned power outages.
India’s coal-fired power plants averaged four days of inventory at the end of September, the lowest level in years.
The shortage in India, the world’s second-largest coal-consuming country, follows widespread power outages in China that shuttered factories and affected global production and supply chains.
Coal accounts for nearly 70 percent of India’s electricity generation and around three-quarters of fossil fuels are mined domestically.
As Asia’s third-largest economy recovers from a coronavirus wave, heavy monsoon rains have flooded coal mines and disrupted transportation networks, causing prices to rise sharply for coal buyers , including power plants.
International coal prices have also risen considerably.
However, the ministry was optimistic on Sunday, saying that despite heavy monsoons and a sharp increase in electricity demand, “the domestic supply has been a great support for electricity generation.”
