Coal India Ltd.

In a move that could cause massive blackouts, Coal India is planning to halt eastern region supplies to the country's largest power producer, NTPC, by the end of April, if the latter fails to make its payment yet again.

Power producer NTPC has long complained about quality of coal that is heavily adulterated with rocks and stones for its plants, which besides hurting its output is also slowing down the incoming contracts. Taking a stand against its supplier, the company has blocked a payment aggregating to the sum of Rs 1,000 crore. However, due to non-realization of payments, so far, Coal India has been forced to cash in fixed deposits in order to make payments to its employees.

Coal India's subsidiary, Eastern Coalfields (ECL) supplies coal from its Rajmahal mine in Jharkhand state to NTPC's Kahalgaon and Farakka plants, and further plans to expand the mine's capacity to 17 million tonnes from 14 million tones, which could be hampered if NTPC does not pay its dues.