15 CIL projects may get green clearance in 2 months

The Coal Ministry has expressed confidence that 15 of Coal India's (CIL) projects that have been waiting for environmental clearance are likely to get the green signal in another two months.

"It is quite likely that 15 projects of Coal India may get environmental clearance in another two months," a top official with the Coal Ministry said.

Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal and Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh had an hour-long meeting last evening to take a call on the fate of CIL projects hanging fire due to non-receipt of environmental clearance.

Almost 100 projects of the coal miner came up for discussion in the meeting, which was also attended by CIL Chairman P S Bhattacharya and a few other subsidiaries of the coal major.

As many as 154 projects of Coal India, spread across over 26,000 hectares of land and having a production potential of about 210 million tonnes, are waiting for environmental clearances at the Centre and state level.

Both ministers met earlier this week as well to resolve major issues hurting coal production. Jaiswal had said that a consensus has been reached with the Environment Ministry to sort out many contentious issues involving the sector.

In December last year, the Coal Ministry had expressed concern that delays in the grant of environment clearance to CIL were likely to result in a production loss of about 190 million tonnes of output, valued at about Rs 18,800 crore, by March, 2012.