77 coal blocks off no-mining zones on PMO intervention

Prompted by the Prime Minister’s Office, a high-level inter-ministerial panel has recommended that mining be allowed in as many as 77 coal blocks that were earlier made a no-no affair by the Environment Ministry.In a recent communication to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the Coal Ministry said now only 126 blocks are part of the “no-go” area as against the earlier 203.

“We are going ahead with this set of figures on the number of blocks and areas that have been arrived at after this joint study for again revising production availability and other related issues,” Coal Ministry adviser-projects P R Mandal said in a letter dated June 28, to PMO joint secretary Shatrughna Singh.

Of the total nine coalfields where 203 blocks, or 48 per cent of the its reserves, were declared in the no-go area by the Environment Ministry, the boundaries of mines in eight such coalfields have been tweaked to get 77 blocks out of the barred list, a senior government official said.

The eight coalfields comprise Talcher (Orissa), the IB-Valley (Orissa), Mand-Raigarh (Chhattisgarh), Sohagpur (MP), the Wardha Valley (Maharashtra), Singrauli (Andhra), North Karanpura (Jharkhand), and West Bokaro (Jharkhand). The estimated coal reserves in these regions could not be ascertained, as they are yet to be explored.

“According to the joint exercise by the Environment Ministry and Coal Ministry, based on the cluster or sub-cluster approach, there are still 126 blocks in the no-go zones and 449 blocks in the go-areas, and the boundaries of 27 blocks are yet to be modified,” the official said.

Before the PMO intervention, 203 blocks were in the no-mining zones and 399 were in the go-areas. But the panel has not moved any block of the Hasdeo-Arand coal fields in Chhattisgarh, where a 4,000-mw ultra mega power project is proposed, to the mining belt from the prohibited zone.

The PMO undertook a few joint meetings with the officials of the Coal and Environment ministries in the last two months, as the Environment Ministry put almost half of the regions of these nine coal fields in the “no-go” zone. The PMO intervention came after it was decided that such a ban could lead to the loss of revenue to the Exchequer and may also make the place a “breeding ground for Naxalism,” the PMO had said, according to the official.

Last week Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal had said an issue relating to restricting coal mining on environmental grounds was under the consideration of the PMO and would be resolved soon.