These extra shipments, however, are not expected to fully cover the impact, however, as coal stocks are already short at such critical levels that power outages are considered inevitable. India is the world’s third largest coal importer.
The recently passed Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Bill included provisions allowing the possible opening up of the coal mining sector, in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to cancel 214 of the 218 coal block licenses awarded to private companies for captive mining since 1993.
Unions including the BJP-backed Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, or BMS, boycotted a meeting convened by the government on January 3, claiming government failed to consult them before the bill was passed, and said the strike could even go on indefinitely if the government did not agree to its terms.
"If need be, we may extend this to an indefinite strike," a senior leader of the INTUC union said.
INTUC, BMS, Hind Mazdoor Sabha and All India Trade Union Congress are going ahead with the strike, but the CPI (M)-backed Centre for Indian Trade Unions has only declared a one-day strike on January 13.
Rajendra Prasad Singh, general secretary of the Congress-affiliated INTUC, said: "We requested Coal Minister Piyush Goyal to meet us before such policy decisions are taken. However, the government passed an ordinance without discussing it with us.”
“It also took the effort of introducing the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Bill without meeting us. Now that we have threatened to go on a strike, he wants to meet us.”
The five unions representing 90% of Coal India’s 350,000 workers are backing the strike, which could disrupt 1.3 million tonnes of the company’s 1.6MMtpd output – putting further pressure on coal supplies at India’s power plants.
"Enough arrogance has been displayed by the government. We will go on the five-day strike as scheduled. It is time for coal workers to ‘do or die’," SQ Zama, secretary general of Indian National Mineworkers Federation, said.
Reuters reported that about 20% of power plants monitored by the Central Electricity Authority are currently running on coal stocks of less than four days.
Jibon Roy, general secretary of All India Coal Workers Federation, said the unions’ unity was “unprecedented” and “should be regarded as strong opposition against the government's move for introducing cheap labour”
"The Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Bill will replace the Coal Mines (Nationalisation) Act of 1973 that did not allow any private commercial mining. We are dead against it,” he said.
