New Delhi: All India Power Engineers’ Federation (AIPEF) on Tuesday termed the Centre's import-related directives for the thermal plants as a cost burden on the power generating units. "Despite Coal India having sufficient coal reserves, public sector thermal power plants of the states are being instructed to import coal by the power ministry using emergency powers," AIPEF chairman Shailendra Dubey alleged.

In a statement, he also said that this is increasing the cost burden on power generation of the financially poor power distribution companies. Dubey termed the bidding of transmission projects as "large-scale privatisation".

Large-scale privatisation of transmission is going on in almost every state in the name of tariff-based competitive bidding. He also said that the Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2022 is an attempt to push a failed experiment to benefit private players at the cost of state discoms.