Coal India’s claim that it exceeded contractual supply commitments to NTPC has sharpened, rather than resolved, the central question facing India’s thermal power system: how can a power producer receive more coal than it did a year earlier while several of its plants hold only about a week’s supply? The answer lies in the difference between mine dispatches, contractual deliveries, stock held across the supply chain and fuel physically available at individual power stations.
Coal India Ltd (CIL) said it supplied 97 million tonnes of coal to NTPC Ltd and its joint ventures between April and September of FY27, 5 per cent more than in the corresponding period last year and 1 per cent above the level recorded in the same period of FY25. The company said this was above its commitments under Fuel Supply Agreements and that there had been no shortfall from its side.
The statement followed remarks by a senior NTPC executive that most of the company’s power plants had coal stocks sufficient for only about seven days. Business Standard had reported that NTPC’s coal stocks fell to 5.2 million tonnes from 18.7 million tonnes in April. NTPC operates 50 power plants across the country and is the largest buyer of CIL’s coal, making the discrepancy important for the reliability of a large part of India’s electricity system.
The apparent contradiction is not necessarily a dispute over whether coal was dispatched. It is a question of where the coal was at each point in the system, how quickly it moved from mines to plants, how much was consumed during the period and whether supply was evenly distributed across generating stations. CIL’s figures measure deliveries and dispatches. NTPC’s warning concerns the stock available at power stations to sustain generation. Those are connected indicators, but they are not interchangeable.
CIL said its overall dispatches to the power sector reached 302.8 million tonnes during the first half of FY27, the highest for any first half and 6 per cent higher than in the corresponding period last year. The company also began the financial year with a record opening inventory of 130 million tonnes on April 1. It said approximately 63 million tonnes were liquidated during the first half while supplies continued to power plants and other consumers.
By October 1, however, CIL’s pithead stocks stood at 67 million tonnes, compared with 78.7 million tonnes a year earlier. This decline indicates that the mining company has been drawing down inventory even while increasing dispatches to the power sector. The data therefore describes a system with strong movement of coal from mines but a lower stock position at the producer’s end and a reported shortage of cover at several generating stations.
That distinction matters because thermal power plants do not operate on annual supply totals alone. They require regular deliveries that match daily consumption, transport capacity and plant-level demand. A high six-month delivery number can coexist with low station stocks if coal is being consumed rapidly, if replenishment is uneven, or if deliveries do not arrive at the same pace as generation requirements. The supplied information does not establish which of these factors was most important at individual NTPC plants, but it shows why company-wide dispatch figures cannot by themselves settle the question of fuel security.
NTPC is responding by diversifying its sourcing beyond CIL, its largest supplier. The company is buying coal from commercial and captive miners, while CIL said it was also supplying NTPC under bridge linkage. This broadening of the supplier base points to the institutional challenge in India’s coal-based power system: the reliability of generation depends not only on the production capacity of the dominant miner, but also on contracts, linkages, rail and logistics arrangements, plant-level inventories and the ability to shift between sources.
CIL’s response also addresses concerns about whether the drawdown of inventories has affected coal quality. The company said there had been no change in the grade or quality profile of coal supplied to power plants. Results from third-party sampling agencies during FY27 showed that the difference between the weighted average declared gross calorific value and the analysed gross calorific value was around 67 kilocalories per kg, within the 300 kcal/kg grade band cited by the company.
Gross calorific value measures the heat energy released when coal is burned. CIL argued that the reported quality variation indicated that stock liquidation had not altered the grade profile of coal delivered to power plants. It also said specific coal consumption remained broadly stable at 0.69 kg per kilowatt-hour during the first half of FY27, compared with 0.68 kg in FY23 and 0.69 kg in FY26.
The consumption figure is significant because it provides a measure of how much coal is required to generate each unit of electricity. CIL said the broadly stable level persisted even as imported coal blending declined sharply, from 35.1 million tonnes in FY23 to 6.8 million tonnes in FY26 and around 1.2 million tonnes in the first half of FY27. The company interpreted the comparable specific coal consumption as evidence of an improvement in the quality of domestic coal supplied to power plants.
These figures support CIL’s argument that the issue is not a deterioration in the quality or volume of its contractual deliveries. But they do not answer the separate operational question of why NTPC plants had about seven days of stock. The supplied material contains no plant-by-plant breakdown of deliveries, consumption, rail movement, unloading capacity or stock norms. Without that information, the national dispatch totals cannot identify where the constraint emerged between the mine and the generating station.
The dispute also shows why fuel-security reporting needs more than a single headline number. CIL’s 97 million tonnes supplied to NTPC and its joint ventures, its 302.8 million tonnes of power-sector dispatches and its opening inventory of 130 million tonnes describe the upstream position. NTPC’s 5.2 million tonnes of stocks and reported seven-day cover describe the downstream position. Both sets of numbers can be accurate while revealing different risks in the same system.
Quality verification is another part of that institutional framework. CIL said consumers can engage any of 11 independent third-party sampling agencies empanelled by the Power Finance Corporation to assess coal quality at loading ends. For quality variations at the mine end, the Fuel Supply Agreement provides for a compensation mechanism. These arrangements create a formal process for testing and resolving quality differences, but the input does not indicate whether any such compensation process has been activated in relation to the current NTPC stock concerns.
The larger urban and infrastructure question is the resilience of India’s electricity supply chain. Thermal plants remain dependent on a continuous flow of fuel, and interruptions or low inventories can affect the ability of utilities to respond to demand even when annual or half-yearly supply commitments appear to have been met. For cities, industries and households, reliability is experienced at the point of generation and distribution, not at the mine gate.
The evidence currently confirms two facts. CIL says its contractual coal supply to NTPC exceeded commitments, while NTPC-linked reporting indicates that many plants had limited stock cover. It also confirms that CIL’s power-sector dispatches increased year on year, even as its pithead inventory fell and NTPC’s reported stock declined sharply from April. What remains unresolved in the supplied material is the plant-level chain connecting deliveries to available stocks. The next important evidence will be detailed information on station-wise inventories, consumption, transport flows and the steps being taken by NTPC and CIL to rebuild fuel cover.
