NEW DELHI | March 08, 2016: As many as 22 mining projects of state-owned Coal India have received green clearance this fiscal.

"So far, in the current fiscal, 16 coal mining projects of Coal India having an additional capacity of 48 million tonnes received environment clearance," an official said.

The official further said six mining projects of Coal India have received forest clearance.

CIL accounts for over 80 per cent of the domestic coal production.

The government has set a production target of 550 million tonnes for the coal PSU in the ongoing fiscal.

The government had earlier said its focus is to increase coal production to the extent possible by facilitating environment clearance (EC) and forest clearance (FC) expeditiously, pursuing with the states for assistance in land acquisition and coordinated efforts with Railways for movement of coal.

"Further, structural factors such as problems in expanding the capacity arising from difficulties in land acquisition, R&R... difficulties in obtaining EC, restrictions arising out of the imposition of Central Environment Pollution Index guidelines and non-availability of FC in time, have constrained the growth of domestic coal production", Coal and Power Minister Piyush Goyal had earlier said.

The government had set an ambitious one billion tonnes of production target for Coal India by 2020.

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