"I do not mean to say that there won't be enough coal, but the quality of coal will definitely not be the same as it is today," Singh said in a press conference. "Secondly, it will safeguard the environment," he added.

Singh was here to inaugurate a cultural programme of the company. It was originally scheduled to be inaugurated by the Union power minister, P R Kumaramangalam, who could not make it owing to indisposition.

Expressing concern about the lack of transmission & distribution lines in the country, the PowerGrid chief said that "a major part of the expenditure was made only on the generation area, while only 46 per cent of the resources were spent on T&D development."

The eastern grid in particular was suffering frequent grid failures asthere was excess power generation while the T&D was very low, he said. When asked why then the Centre was setting up two new projects of 2000mw each at Mokamah and Karnpura (Hazaribagh), the Powergrid chief said: "We are now having a national grid by which the excess power in certain areas could be transmitted to the grids in south, north and west, which are in need of power."

Apart from plans to export power to different grids, PowerGrid is also planning to help the various state electricity boards of the country to set up more transmission & distribution networks. "There are many missing links and we have taken a policy decision to help build more T&D lines," he added. PowerGrid has already established many regional grids which will help in distribution of power to the national grid once the project is fully functional.

Singh also said that from now on T&D lines would be set up parallelly with any new power project. The PowerGrid chairman said that at present 33 projects are under the `SystemImprovement Scheme' and added that "out of these, the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) has already cleared 20."

Highlighting the new ventures of the company, Singh said that PowerGrid was now entering the field of telecommunications and had asked the state electricity boards to enter into a joint venture with it. "Most of the states have shown positive attitude and I expect that Bihar will join them soon for the success of this project," Singh added.