‘Bring out more coal to improve power generation in India’

New Delhi: As fossil fuel still takes major lead in power generation in India, it is imperative to adopt modern techniques to extract more coal to meet the energy demand, according to Alok Perti, Advisor, Ministry of Coal & Former Coal Secretary.

While addressing ASSOCHAM’s 3rd International Coal Conference on Wednesday, he said, “Improvement is required in the management of Coal India Limited (CIL) and need to focus on production to meet the demand instead of looking at margins.” 

“Unfortunately, for the last few months, it is giving projection only, CIL has been unable to increase the production during the last few years to achieve its targets due to lack of modernization” he added. 

“It is envisaged that the Indian coal sector may witness the shift from monopolistic pattern to all inclusive competitive regulated by Coal Regulator,” said D C Garg, CMD, Western Coal Fields Limited, adding, “CIL has a major stake as its market share which at present is 82% would not be less than 75% even with captive mining contributing 101.4 Mt, arrival of FDI and policy paradigm shift.”

Garg further added that the mine size and equipment size will be upscaled with the major thrust on automation of operations in opencast and underground mines. The concept of multi job concept in face operations will help us to manage our operations with less manpower.

“Government has to play an important role to increase domestic coal production and extend all support to both private corporates and PSUs engaged in coal mining,” said Sandeep Jajodia, Chairman, ASSOCHAM National Council on Coal & Chairman, Monnet Ispat & Energy Ltd, adding, “Forest and environment clearances along with land acquisition and associated R&R policies are a cause of concern for the sector.”

He further said that most of these clearances are beyond the control of the coal block alottees, the department of coal needs to play a more proactive role in helping and supporting the coal block alottees in getting these clearances in shorter time.

“Coal being a preferred source of power generation in India, its demand has rapidly increased in accordance with India’s economic growth,” said Rajkumar Dhoot, president ASSOCHAM.

“But there is a huge gap between the demand for coal and the actual production which has been marred by implementation of stringent environmental laws like considerable delay in obtaining forestry clearances and other issues include tenancy land acquisition and associated resettlement and rehabilitation (R&R) issues, growing naxalism, prominence of coal mafia, skewed concentration of coal deposits and lack of basic transportation infrastructure. India needs to address these issues to bridge the rising coal demand-supply gap,” observed Dhoot.

India has fifth largest proven coal reserves in the world and contributes to around six per cent of the global coal production, according to the ASSOCHAM study.