Indian nationals better ought to brace themselves for more power shortages and energy crisis as state-run Coal India Limited (CIL) announced on Wednesday production targets for the current fiscal year as contained in its annual plan have been slashed to 440 million tonnes from 453 million tonnes.

This, as the federal government of India rejected CIL's demand to scale down its target output.

Heavy rainfall, industrial strikes and delays in the release of government grants of forestry and environmental clearances to coal projects prompted the revision.

"We have kept (production target) of at least 440 million tonnes," N C Jha, CIL chairman, told reporters on the sidelines of the International Conference of Safety in Mines Research Institutes.

A large number of coal-based power plants now face a shortage of coal stocks after CIL failed to meet its fuel supply obligations.

India's Planning Commission had earlier projected the target to reach 200 million tonne in the next five years. The country's output is estimated at 554 million tonne for the same period.

Earlier, government said India's coal demand-supply gap may reach 142 million tonne in the current fiscal year.

CIL had asked India's coal ministry to revise the target, admitting it may not be able to cover the shortfall in output that occurred on the first half of 2011-12.

CIL accounts for 81 per cent of the domestic coal production.

But CIL it plans to mine between 556 million tonnes to 615 million tonnes of coal in the concluding year of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2012-17).

"We are looking at two scenarios... One is business as usual... It would be 556 million tonnes in the terminal year of 12th Plan. And the other scenario is 615 million tonnes," he said.

The state-run coal company missed its April-September target by about 20 million tonnes, with an output of 176 million tonnes against the 196 million tonnes target.

CIL had lowered its production target to 440.20 million tonnes from 460.50 million tonnes in the last fiscal year as well.