Ministry of Power’s latest thread is a welcome step and a harsh wake-up call for many

We are living in a post-truth world. Where objective facts carry less value than appeals to emotion and personal belief. Influential people use their personal biases to spread misinformation, disinformation and mal-information on an issue. Mostly derived from some sort of political lineage, people try to mold truth according to their personal objectives. This is dangerous because, in the information explosion world, readers rarely care to recheck facts. Even the factual rebuttal carries less value as the intended goal to mislead is already achieved with the initial act.

The intellectual game of misinformation

Shreya Jai, Journalist Energy and Climate for Business Standards had tried to mislead people about coal imports in the country. On August 3, 2022, the journalist in its successive tweets claimed that the Modi government has taken ‘dizzying U-turns on imported coal’.

The journalist said that “In 3 months, the Centre has gone from mandating imported coal blending for power gencos to making it optional. In May, the Ministry of Power directed gencos to blend 10% imported coal or face domestic supply reduction.”

She further claimed that the ministry evoked Section 11 of the Electricity Act allowing all power generators to pass through the high cost of imported coal to the consumers. National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), the power public sector unit, was the first to place an import tender of 6.25 million tonnes. All the tenders totaling Rs 8,308 crores went to Adani Industries. It estimated a 50-70 paisa/unit increase in power tariff after 10% imported coal blending.

“As several states clamoured against the idea of importing coal, PowerMin asked them to put their tenders in abeyance. It instead directed national miner & world’s 2nd largest coal producer Coal India Limited (CIL) to import coal for first time in its history”, her tweet read.

“But as against an estimated demand of 40 million tonnes, CIL received interest for barely 2.4 MT from states and private gencos. The first tender of Rs 4,500 crore went to Adani Enterprises and the second to a blacklisted firm from Indonesia”, she continued.

Explaining the policy inconsistency she said, “..the constant policy flips over coal imports has fazed the state-owned and private gencos with a cumulative capacity of 108 gigawatts which cannot afford costly imports and are also not paid by discoms in time.”

She further asked the question, does India even need imported coal?

Shreya Jai, attacking the government’s decision to revoke imported coal on August 2, 2022, said, “Yesterday, the PowerMin revoked all its earlier decisions on imported coal, leaving it up to the states and gencos to import coal, if need be. It even told NTPC to reduce blending to 5% from 10%”.

Replying to that, the Ministry of Power in its latest thread has slammed her for the ‘utter ignorance of the sector’. The Ministry said, “This refers to the tweet of one Shreya Jai– said to be a correspondent of Business Standard. The tweet displays an utter ignorance of the sector which she is reported to be covering”.

Also Read: Misinformation, credit-hogging, stupid advices and quest for viral content: Twitter is turning into a major misinformation pandemic

Power Ministry’s Factual Rebuttal

In the long thread, the Power Ministry on August 18 called out her tweet ‘display of utter ignorance’. The ministry rebuking her claim on coal blending said, “The import of coal for blending has always been happening. In 2013-14, for example, it was 38.5 million tonnes. In 2018-19, it was 23 million tonnes. In 2019-20, it was 23.8 million tonnes. In 2022-23, the import for blending has been 12.2 million tonnes.”

Appraising the increased demand with data, the thread stated, “Our power demand grew by 15 to 20% in energy terms from August/September 2021 onwards. The domestic coal supplies increased, but not enough to meet demand. By April/May 2022, the gap between daily consumption and daily arrival was 1.2 lakh tonnes per day. Coal stocks at power plants were declining at that rate”.

Further, speaking about the urgency of import, the Power Ministry said, “Had we not started imports when we did, our coal stock would have touched a low of 7 million tonnes on 23rd July. This would have meant large numbers of plants having zero stock – leading to large-scale load shedding.”

Giving reasoning about the imports, the Ministry said, “Decision to import coal for blending is dynamic and depends on the supplies of domestic coal. When the supplies of domestic coal are sufficient we do not import/import less coal. When domestic supplies are insufficient, we need to import coal for blending”.

Speaking about the procurement policy, the Power Ministry said, “All Gencos – Central, State and IPPs import separately after floating their own bids. If the States want the CIL to import on their behalf they give their indent to the CIL. All procurement is through open international bids and contracts are awarded which can supply coal at lowest rate”.

The Journalist’s claim that the knee-jerk reactions to coal demand-supply policy are a disservice and  cannot sustain the test of fact. Policies are meant to change according to changing conditions.

Further, her claim that all the tenders went to Adani Enterprises is nothing but an attempt to malign a logistical company. Coal India Limited allots every tender online through eTender Portal with open bidding. The fairness in tender allotment has been the hallmark of this government.

Recently, Sunil Bharti Mittal, founder and chairman of Bharti Enterprises, appreciating the government’s seamless process of 5G bidding said, “Yesterday Airtel paid Rs 8312.4 cr towards spectrum dues and was provided the allocation letter for the designated frequency bands within hours. E band allocation was given along with spectrum as promised”.

“No Fuss, No Follow Up, No running around the corridors and No tall claims. This is the ease of doing business at work in its full glory. In my over 30 years of first-hand experience with DOT, this is a first! Business as it should be. Leadership at work-Right at the top and at the helm of telecom. What a Change! Change that can transform this nation – power its dreams to be a developed nation”, he added.

This is not an utter ignorance of the fact but a deliberate attempt of influential people to mold the truth. How can a country maintain consistency in importing coal? Without demand, can any country commit to importing anything? Demand and supply balancing is the cornerstone of an economy. You can maintain consistency in policy. But how can you maintain consistency in importing quantities of any product? Further, short-term variations in quantities of coal imports do not have any significant impact on the long-term goal to bring the imported coal to zero.

Every government ministry should be proactive in clearing doubt with factual statements. Further, the misinformation must be countered timely with instant rebuttals. Recently, Hardeep Singh Puri, the Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs, had become too enthusiastic to announce flats to Rohingya Refugees. But, later the Home Ministry had to clarify the information.

Read More: The unsettling arrogance of Hardeep Singh Puri

This instant rebuttal of the Power Ministry must be followed by every ministry to stop the menace of disinformation. Further, mechanisms in every ministry should be adopted to clarify any misleading information in the public domain.

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