Jharkhand woman creates history: Meet India's 1st woman mining engineer

Akanksha Kumari, a graduate of Birsa Institute of Technology Sindri. has broken the gender barriers by joining Central Coalfield Limited's underground mines in Jharkhand's Churi. The family says she was fond of coal since her childhood

Hazaribagh (Jharkhand): Creating history, Akanksha Kumari, who hails from Barkagaon village in Jharkhand, has become the first woman mining engineer in India. Kumari, a graduate from Birsa Institute of Technology, Sindri, has broken the gender barriers by joining Central Coalfield Limited's underground mines in Jharkhand's Churi. Central Coalfield Limited is a subsidiary of Coal India Limited.

While lauding her achievement, Pralhad Joshi, Union Minister of Coal, Mines and Parliamentary Affairs of India, said, "To promote gender equality and generate more opportunities, the government under Prime Minister Narendra Modiji has opened the doors of underground coal mines to women. Ms Akanksha Kumari becomes the 1st woman mining engineer in Coal India to work in an underground mine."

Tweet by Union Minister Pralhad Joshi

Expressing their overwhelming joy, Kumari's family members said that she has been fond of coal from her childhood as there used to be a coal mine adjacent to their house in Barkagaon. Her father Ashok Kumar, said that Kumari has been a promising and competitive girl, adding that she used to excel in her studies.

Akanksha completed her schooling at Navodaya Vidyalaya in Hazaribagh and opted for mining in the engineering discipline. After completing her engineering from BIT (Sindri) Dhanbad in 2018, she worked for three years at the Hindustan Zinc Limited's Ballaria mine in Rajasthan.

Her father Ashok Kumar works as a teacher in a school in Barkagaon, and her mother Malti Devi is a housewife.