Date | Jan 11, 2017:
Coal India’s largest subsidiary — the South Eastern Coalfields Limited (SECL) — has told a Parliamentary panel that it is facing major challenges due to delay in land acquisition, obtaining forest clearances and environment clearances.
The SECL told the Parliamentary Standing Committee on steel and coal that one of the major challenges being faced by the company is “delay in acquisition of land, evacuation of sites and its possession due to cumbersome takeover process, improper land records, rehabilitation and resettlement of affected families.”
The SECL also informed the committee, when it last met on December 29 last year, that several of its new projects such as Jagannathpur open cast mine, Rampur Batura open cast mine and Ketki underground mine “could not be started this year due to (delay in) environment clearances and forest clearances.” The company added that it has “applied for environment clearance enhancement of Dipka and Gevra projects, which have not been granted till date.”
The SECL is operating 86 mines — 62 of them are underground, 23 are open cast and one is of mixed category. Out of 86 mines, 52 mines are situated in Chhattisgarh, while the remaining are in Madhya Pradesh.
One of the committee members then asked the steps that are being taken by the company to overcome aforementioned challenges. In response, the SECL stated that it is involved in “regular persuasion with villagers and state authorities” to reduce the time taken in land acquisition. Moreover, the company noted that it is following up closely “with the concerned authorities” to deal with the delay in getting green clearances.
Two other challenges that were listed by SECL in front of the Standing Committee were “marketing of high grade coal from underground mines” and “coal evacuation from Mand-Raigarh coalfield”. To overcome these, the company said it is indulged in “rationalisation of coal price” and “revision of grades of coal have been/being done”. In order to deal with coal evacuation problem, the SECL mentioned that the “establishment of two rail corridors, namely East Corridors and East-West rail corridors is under progress”, will supplement “infrastructure for coal evacuation.”
In 2015-16, the gross sales of company were of Rs 24,900 crore – it produced 137.93 million tonnes (MT) of coal in 2015-16, accounting for over 25.60 per cent of total coal production of Coal India.
Another member of the committee asked about the constraints for the SECL in stepping up its production capacity “to the level of projected coal demand during 12th five year plan and beyond.” The 12th five year plan had estimated that the Coal India would have a coal production of 615 million tonnes by the end of 2016-17. In front of committee, the SECL reiterated the issues related to delay in getting green clearances and in land acquisition process. However, it said that “economic unviability of future underground projects” is one of the other constraints.
One other major constraint listed by the company is “requirement of additional land for depillaring in existing underground mines, to comply with recent DGMS (Directorate General of Mines Safety) guidelines.” Depillaring is about removal of pillars to create a safe environment in an underground coal mine by devising an artificial support system using roof bolting system, cable bolts, truss system etc.
The SECL was also asked if it has large deposits of coal in some of the reserve forests that are in its command area. The company replied: “Yes, there are large deposits of coal in some of the reserve forest in the command area of SECL, namely in the coalfields of Sonhat, Korba, Bisrampur, Mand-Raigarh, Sohagpur and Umaria.” The company added that various open-cast mines have been planned in these forest areas like Pelma, Kartali East, Madannagar, Malachua, Amritdhara etc.
(Source: http://indianexpress.com/)