Nagpur | Sept 22, 2015: Public sector miner Western Coalfields Limited (WCL) has emerged as a major purchaser of agricultural land in the region over the last one year. As it needs more land to start new mines, the company has purchased 2,300 hectares of land in 10 months. This is double the quantum acquired over the last five years.

WCL officials say this is expected to be an internal record and also the highest among other government agencies operating in the region.

The chunk of acquisition has happened in Nagpur, Chandrapur and Yavatmal districts, with a small portion of land being purchased in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh also.

Company sources say the new policy, which calls for a liberal approach towards project affected persons (PAPs), has helped. WCL claims now people living in the future mine area are reaching the company's office with offers to take over their land. "Out of 20 visitors at least eight turn out to be from the mine areas," said a senior official.

The compensation rates were fixed in a bandwidth of 6 to 10 lakh an acre in 2012 instead of going by the state government valuation. This was a major increase, but there were several disputes related to offering jobs to PAPs, which had held up the acquisition. The compensation package has a choice of offering jobs instead of money. However, many cases were held up on technical grounds. The public sector unit has now softened its stand and granted the jobs. In the last 10 months, 1,021 person have been given jobs in WCL as against 941 in the last 10 years, said a source in the company.

The hurry is in part because of holding company Coal India Limited's (CIL) plans to take production to 1 billion million tonnes from over 450 million tonnes at present by 2020. WCL's share of this will come to 60 million tonnes of coal.

"The company needs to start new mines to increase production, for which more land is needed. This has led to a payment of 445 crore as compensation, which is four times the figure of last 10 years," said the source.

WCL has set a target of mining 45.5 million tonnes in the current fiscal and taking it to 48 million tonnes in the next. Currently, it has achieved a level of 41 million tonnes.

The company has chalked out a plan to open one mine each month for the coming two years. Till now, eight mines have been opened, with the peak production to begin from October, a source said.

There are plans to inaugurate two major projects at Ballarpur and Chandrapur with a capacity of 5 and 8 million tonnes respectively next year.

(Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/)