Nirmalya Mukherjee / Kolkata/ Bhubaneswar September 08, 2008, 5:40 IST Coal India Limited (CIL) has challenged contentions of the Railways and power companies on the loading and supply of coal to the country's different power units, 43 of which are currently identified as 'critical' and 25 as 'super critical' because of coal shortage. A week ago a record number of 47 out of 73 power units in the country were identified as 'critical'. Power plants having coal stocks between 4 and 7 days fall in the critical category and those below four days are called super critical. Most of the critical and super critical plants are in northern and western India. CIL currently has a stock position of 30 million tonnes, but with most of it lying in Orissa (MCL) and Jharkhand (CCL) the company does not know how to solve the problem. A top CIL official said, "there is law and order problem in Jharkhand and Orissa and we are, therefore, keeping our fingers crossed as to how to meet requirements of the power companies. A situation has arrived when they will have to make arrangements through imports". At a recent meeting held between the coal, power and railway ministries, CIL said comparison done between supply of coal during March 2008 and July 2008 was not fair. CIL said there could be no such comparison as July-August were rainy months when production dipped. CIL figures revealed that supplies rose 9 per cent over the same period the previous year. Loading of rakes during this period rose from 121 to 133 in July 2008 as compared to the previous year. CIL maintained it was meeting over 98 per cent of its annual action plan (AAP) for the power companies. CIL chairman Partha S Bhattacharya claimed,