Calcutta, April 20: The Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government’s failure in stopping daylight loot of coal in the Birbhum-Burdwan belt has cast a shadow on the viability of small and medium manufacturing units that drive the economy of the region.

Power cuts, ranging eight to 10 hours a day, have resulted in lower capacity utilisation at 150-odd units that manufacture various steel products.

“The plants are running at 60 per cent of their installed capacity because of the power shortage. Thousands of contract workers have been rendered redundant,” said Sandip Bhalotia, a local businessman and member of the Raniganj Chamber of Commerce.

The Damodar Valley Cor- poration (DVC) — the prime supplier of industrial electricity — blames the shortfall on scarcity of coal.

Bhattacharjee’s government had used the same excuse — scarcity of coal — to justify the mismatch between power generation and demand, which has resulted in long power cuts across the state.

Investigating the coal-shortage argument, The Telegraph found that one of the major reasons behind the shortage was the government’s failure to act against daylight looting of coal from mines in the Raniganj-Asansol belt.

The poor generation at the DVC plant at Mejia is also because of the plundering of coal, which has forced it to run at 55 per cent of its installed capacity. The Mejia plant has four 210MW and two 250MW units.

“We are getting three to four rakes a day instead of six. Mejia is operating at 715MW today instead of the installed capacity of 1340MW,” said Umesh Kumar, DVC’s secretary and financial adviser.

The distance between the Eastern Coalfields mines in Raniganj and Mejia is no more than 25km, but rakes that contain 59 wagons each are stopped and plundered in the stretch everyday. Because of the many loot halts, they cannot make the required number of trips from the mines to the plant.

“We have written to the Union home ministry seeking the Central Industrial Security Force. We have also thought of taking the help of retired army personnel. But the problem is of general law and order and we can’t do much about it,” added Kumar.

The persistent power crisis in the state because of coal shortage has brought the coal looting to the centrestage, prompting the chief minister to ask his police to crack down.

The situation, however, has remained unchanged on the ground. Not just less-than-capacity production at the existing plants, the power crisis because of coal plundering has also held up commissioning of many new units.

“We have completed all formalities but the DVC has asked us to wait for a month for the power connection. It is understandable. They can’t even give power to existing units,” said the owner of a unit at Bamunara, near Durgapur.

While the legal units suffer, the stolen coal provides a cheap source of energy to many illegal sponge iron units.