New Delhi: The Central government has identified 12 new areas of coal blocks in the NorthEast region and 19 coal blocks in the rest of the country for exploration of coal.
Informing this in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, Coal Minister Prahlad Joshi has said that 10 new coal mining areas have been identified in Chhattisgarh, four each in Madhya Pradesh and Odisha, and one coal block has been identified in Jharkhand. In the Northeastern region, four new coal blocks have been identified in Arunachal Pradesh, three each in Assam and Mizoram and one in Nagaland.
“Finding new areas for mining coal and lignite through exploration is a continuous process. In the FY 2021-22, CMPDI has identified 19 coal blocks (Excluding NER) and 12 Blocks in the North East region for exploration of coal in the new areas,” said Joshi in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.
He informed that as many as 28 mines of Coal India Limited (CIL) and 10 mines of Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) have either been closed or discontinued during the last three years. Similarly, 28 mines of CIL and 11 mines of SCCL are likely to be closed in the current and next three years. Referring to the steps taken to increase the domestic production of coal, Joshi said that commercial auctions of coal blocks have been provided on a revenue sharing basis.
“There was an enactment of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2021. The Act provides that captive mines owners (other than atomic minerals) may sell up to 50 percent of their annual mineral (including coal) production in the open market after meeting the requirement of the end use plant linked with the mine in such manner as may be prescribed by the Central Government and on payment of such additional amount. This step is an attempt to stimulate the coal block allocated to enhance coal production,” said Joshi.
He also said that his ministry has also taken several steps to reduce the import of coal including an Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) has been constituted in the Ministry of Coal for the purpose of coal import substitution among others.
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The representatives from the Ministry of Power, Ministry of Railways, Ministry of Shipping, Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Steel, Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME), Department for Promotion of Industry & Internal Trade (DPIIT), Central Electricity Authority (CEA), Coal Companies and Ports are members of this IMC.
“This Committee provides a platform for discussions on a larger forum with the Administrative Ministries so as to guide them to encourage the coal consumers of their respective sector to eliminate imports of coal. On the directions of the IMC, an Import Data System has been developed by the Ministry of Coal to enable the Ministry to track the imports of coal,” said Joshi.
In another reply, Joshi informed the Parliament that there is no shortage of coal in the country. “The all India coal production in the year 2021-2022 was 778.19 Million Tonne (MT) in comparison to 716.083 MT in the year 2020-2021. Further, in the current financial year (upto June), the country has produced 204.876 MT of coal as compared to 156.11 MT during the same period of last year with a growth of about 31 percent,” said Joshi.
In 2022-2023 (April 2022 to June 2022), as per the Ministry of Power, all India's average gap between the Energy requirements and Energy Supplied was only 1 percent. “Gap between energy demand and supply is generally on account of factors other than inadequacy of power availability in the country, e.g. constraints in distribution network, financial constraints, commercial reasons, forced outage of generating units,” Joshi said.
