'DNA' exclusive: MoEF clashes with coal ministry on mines

While the government is flooded with applications for more coal mines, the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has posed a query about the actual usage of coal mines already granted clearance.

In a meeting held in November last, the MoEF officials asked the coal ministry to get back to them with concrete numbers.

Sources told DNA that the MoEF believes that the current mines remain grossly unused while greedy developers are trying to corner precious natural resources.

“It has been observed that the existing capacity of coal blocks is not fully used by the companies involved and instead applications for new blocks are being presented before us for clearance. This is unfair. So, we have politely asked the coal ministry to give us a detail of the unused capacity of the existing coal blocks,” a top official of the environment ministry said.

Industry watchers also feel this has been done by the MoEF to hit back at detractors who claim that the ministry has been holding back growth. Instead, the MoEF is posing hard questions to expose the fact that existing mines are lying unexploited when new applications are piling up.

“It has been nearly two months since they were asked about it but they have not got back to us on this still,” said the environment ministry official adding they had also asked about the reclamation of the coal mines.

A series of meetings involving members of the coal ministry, environment ministry and other government departments has been going over this issue in the last few months. The pressure on MoEF can be gauged from the fact that apart from these meetings, separate meetings are also conducted by the Prime Minister’s Office and the Cabinet Secretariat on the issue.

The environment ministry’s contention also finds favours with environmentalists. A few months ago the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) had published a study claiming that an unprecedented amount of land is being diverted for coal mining and other industrial projects in the last five years without a check contrary to industry’s claim that green clearances are harming their growth.

It claimed that during 2007-2011, 8,284 projects were granted forest clearance and 2,03,576 hectare (ha) of forest land was diverted. It said from 2007 to August 2011, 181 coal mines were given clearances by MoEF. The combined capacity of these 181 mines was pegged at around 583 million tonnes per annum. “In 2010, India produced 537 million tonnes of coal. So, MoEF has granted clearances to double the coal production capacity in the country,” CSE said.

The CSE had said Coal india Limited (CIL), which produces around 90% of India’s coal, has under its control over 200,000 hectare of mine lease area which includes 55,000 of forest area. “The estimate coal reserves with CIL are 64 billion tonnes but it is currently producing only around 500 million tonnes,” CSE claimed. “Who is responsible for the shortage of coal when CIL is already sitting on reserves, which it is not mining.

Perhaps it is being done to facilitate the entry of private companies to get access to captive coal mines. But even these private companies seem to sit on reserves once they obtain it,” said the CSE while outlining various examples of private companies who got land but did not start production.