Mining in troubled waters

500 million tonnes of coal lies under a canal in the Korba district of Chhattisgarh. But, says author, there is a strange reluctance to make any effort to get to the reserve

Motilal Patel, a middle-aged man in Sonpuri village of Korba in Chhattisgarh, has been running a cycle repair shop by the side of the Right Bank Canal for the past six years. As he tinkers with his tools, he is quite unaware that he is sitting on rich treasure beneath. Patel is not the only man in the area oblivious of the fact. Indradev Tiwari, who runs a tea shop just a kilometre away, also expresses incredulity when you tell him that his small shop sits on a huge deposit of coal.

There are many stories of why the people are unaware of this rich seam of coal under their feet. All that they see is the water flowing from the Darri Dam on Hasdeo river from the outskirts of the Korba industrial town into the Right Bank Canal. What they don't know is that geological reports estimate there are 500 million tonnes of coal beneath and around the canal. What is more, the coal seam is around 100 metres thick, which the geologists describe as a rare occurrence. It could earn the Chhattisgarh government over Rs 11,000 crore annually as royalty.

The Central Mine Planning and Design Institute, a subsidiary of Coal India, took the initiative to explore the reserve and found that an 8.5-kilometre stretch of the 47.6-kilometre Right Bank Canal needed to be realigned to enable mining of the coal. Coal India wanted to include the coal-rich region in its Kusmunda open-cast mining project. Accordingly, in October 2011, R N Biswas, the institute's regional director, wrote to the water resources department of the Chhattisgarh government: "Unless the canal is diverted, the coal can't be mined even in the future and will be lost forever beneath the earth." This resource should be salvaged in the interest of the nation, he urged.

Three months later, the executive engineer of the water resources department in Korba responded to Biswas' letter with the advice that Coal India should deposit Rs 27 lakh for conducting a survey and prepare a feasibility report for the diversion of the canal. Coal India has not deposited the amount, and all efforts to find out why were met with silence on the part of the coal miner.

The proposed diversion of the canal would extend the eastern boundary of the Kusmunda open-cast mine to include the locked coal reserve. And since the village land falling in the proposed diversion alignment would, in any case, be acquired for extraction of coal, Coal India and The Central Mine Planning and Design Institute feel there would be no need for extra land acquisition required to change the direction of the Right Bank Canal.

The reluctance to get the coal overground has given rise to conspiracy theories. For instance, Manish Rathore, a Right to Information activist in Korba, seems to believe that the presence of a power plant in the vicinity might be the stumbling block. Rathore rationalises that diverting the canal and its maintenance road would affect the 50-Mw power plant of Swastik Sponge and Power, which uses the canal road for its vehicles. When contacted, Swastik's general manager, S P Reghe, says he would not comment on the issue.

A proper road was planned by the Korba district administration at a cost of Rs 12 crore. It ironically asked Coal India to contribute Rs 10 crore of the project fund, while Swastik Sponge and Power was told to give Rs 1 crore to facilitate access to its plant.

When Coal India realised that the construction of the road implied the authorities were in no mood to divert the canal, it demurred on the ground that since the area had been notified as coal bearing, it could not be part of a project to build a road through it. The district administration was later forced to cancel the tender that had been floated for the construction of the road. (The district authorities did not respond to questions mailed to them for their side of the story).