Continuing the tempo of its unrelenting attack on the Centre in the matter of State’s interests, Telangana Minister for IT and Industries K.T. Rama Rao has written to Union Coal Minister Prahlad Joshi alleging that the Centre is conspiring to privatise Singareni Collieries Company Ltd and auction of four Singareni coal blocks is part of that.
In the letter addressed to Mr. Joshi on Monday, Mr. Rama Rao said the Centre’s decision to auction four coal blocks in Telangana was nothing short of auctioning the future of thousands of coal workers in the open market. Suggesting the Coal Ministry to stop its plans to auction Singareni coal blocks, he said they be removed from the auction list as was done in the case of some States including Gujarat.
After the conspiracy to mortgage the farmers’ future to corporate companies with the help of farm laws the Centre was now planning to ruin the future of Singareni workers by deciding to auction four coal blocks in Telangana – Sathupalli-6, Kalyan Khani-6, Shravanapalli OC and Koyagudem-3 having estimated 480.7 million tonnes coal reserves.
Stating that the Centre had accepted in Lok Sabha recently that SCCL had already spent over ₹59 crore on the four blocks, he sought to know why the Centre was trying to privatise them instead of allotting to Singaren, which isi having performance on a par or better than several other public sector coal companies. He cautioned that the anger of the Singareni workers would reach Delhi/BJP leadership in case the attempts to privatise the four blocks were not stopped.
Mr. Rama Rao explained to the Union Coal Minister that coal production of SCCL had gone up from 45 million tonnes to 67 million tonnes in seven years since formation of Telangana with huge improvement in coal mining, transportation, profits and extension plans. The 2×600 megawatt thermal power plant run by the coal company was also having the best plant load factor among thermal projects in the country.
Singareni was also spreading lights by supplying coal to several Southern and other States and expanding its footprint by acquiring the mining rights in two coal blocks – Naini and New Patrapada – in Odisha. With its sound financial performance the company was also able to share 29% of its profits with its workers in the form of dividend/bonus unlike other public sector companies in the country, he stated.
Mr. Rama Rao, who is also the working president of TRS, alleged that the Centre was conspiring to weaken and induce losses to SCCL and after that it would brand it as a loss-making PSU and eventually privatise it as it was doing in case of Vizag Steel Plant.
