Amidst reports of shortage of coal in the country, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman has termed these claims as baseless and said that India is a 'power surplus' country. Sitaraman said that Energy Minister RK Singh had given an official statement two days back and rubbished the claims of coal crisis.
At Harvard Kennedy School on Tuesday, Sitaraman said, 'Absolutely baseless! There is no shortage of anything. Rather, every power generating station has coal stock for the next four days and the supply chain has not broken, if I remind the statement of the Energy Minister. During the program, a Harvard professor Lawrence Summers questioned Sitaraman about the coal shortage and power cuts. On this, the Finance Minister said that there would be no such shortfall which would disrupt the supply. India is a power surplus country.
Sitaraman, who arrived on an official visit to the US, said in response to a question asked during a conversation at Harvard Kennedy School about the death of four farmers in Lakhimpur Kheri and the arrest of Ashish Mishra, son of Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, Ajay Mishra. You raised such an incident which is completely condemnable and every one of us is saying this. Similar incidents happening elsewhere are a cause of concern for me.
Sitaraman said, 'Such cases in India are happening equally in many different parts of the country. I want you and Dr. Amartya Sen and many others who know India to raise this every time such an incident happens. This type of incident should not be raised only when it is favorable for us to raise them because it happened in a state where BJP is in power, in which the son of one of my cabinet colleague is probably in trouble. He said that a full investigation would be done to find out who was behind the incident.
