Amid coal shortages reported in the country, the Indian Railways said on Monday it has deployed additional rakes to transport coal to power plants.

To ensure a swift supply of coal across power plants, additional trains and rakes by Indian Railways have been initiated to augment the transportation of coal through its network, the Ministry of Railways said in a statement.

Indian Railways has ramped up the coal transportation resulting in 32 per cent more coal freight loading between September 2021 and March 2022.

There has also been an increase in 10 per cent freight, by efficiently mobilizing resources after April 2022, the ministry said.

During the year 2021-22 Indian Railways augmented the transportation of Coal through Railways by a record 111 million tonnes and loaded a record 653 million tonnes of coal as compared to 542 million tonnes in the previous year, registering a growth of 20.4 per cent.

During September 2021 to March 2022 period, the loading of coal to the power sector was augmented by 32 per cent.

In April 2022, Indian Railways has taken many steps to prioritize the loading of coal to the power sector which has led to an increase in the supply of coal by more than 10 per cent within one week time.

The Indian Railways has taken a number of measures in the last one year to ramp up transportation of coal to power plants.

The movement of Coal trains has been prioritized and each train is being intensively monitored during the entire cycle from loading to movement and finally unloading.

Through this prioritization and monitoring, the transit time of coal trains to long-distance power plants has been reduced significantly by 12-36 per cent.

Indian Railways has prioritized the movement of coal to long-distance power plants as well which is reflected in the fact that the average lead of coal trains has increased by 7 per cent in the last 5 days as compared to the average leads of 1st to 10th April.

Despite this increase in the average lead of coal trains the time taken between two successive loading of the same rake for these stocks has been reduced by 10 per cent.

With these operational innovations, Indian Railways has augmented the supply of coal trains to power plants as well as has loaded more coal rakes on a sustained basis, the Ministry of Railways said.