CIL's poor record leads to stranded projects: Ramesh

Even as state-owned Coal India Ltd (CIL) blames the Union environment ministry for its dismal production performance, environment minister Jairam Ramesh, in a meeting earlier this month , said the Maharatna enterprise had a poor record.

Ramesh accused the company of a “poor track record”, noting it as the reason for stranded projects rather than environment issues, even as other ministers continued their attack on Ramesh for kicking-off the row.

CIL’s poor track record on resettlement and rehabilitation led to the refusal of the district magistrates to issue no-objection certificates for revenue land for afforestation and delays in Forests Rights Act compliance, Ramesh said. This also led to acrimony in public hearings for environmental clearances, he said.

The environment minister also pointed out forest land given to coal companies was lost forever in the absence of a suitable strategy to make optimal use of the allocated land. While CIL has been allotted around 2 lakh hectare of land, including 55,000 hectares of forest land so far, no land was returned back to any state government “though they are in operation for 45 years and there is no systematic time-bound reclamation plan in mined-out areas,” Ramesh said.

In order to establish his ministry could not be blamed for stagnating coal production — and the fact that CIL’s production capabilities needed to be revamped — Ramesh pointed out a third of the coal mines currently in operation, violated a few norms. This was irrespective of whether environment and forestry clearances were secured or not.

Jairam’s allegations were part of the presentation he was asked to make on the issue in the earlier meeting of a group of ministers in February. Ministers in charge of infrastructure sectors, including coal minister Sri Prakash Jaiswal, power minister Sushilkumar Shinde, steel minister B P Verma and road transport minister C P Joshi, had made their concerns known to finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, who heads the ministerial panel.

The environment minister’s arguments, however, did failed to impress the inter-ministerial fissure over the ‘No-Go’ issue in the meeting. The issue, which brought major infrastructure projects to a virtual standstill, remains unresolved.

Refuting Jairam’s allegations, coal secretary C Balakrishnan informed the panel of CIL’s efforts to improve its track record in resettlement and rehabilitation. He argued the entire 2 lakh hectare of land allotted to CIL was not minable at any point in time, since land use for a mining project was spread over 25-30 years. He said coal mining is the only industry in which afforestation of mine-out areas is done simultaneously with mining operations.    

Balakrishnan also pointed out even as the environment ministry lifted the CEPI moratorium from one of the coalfields, it could still impact the production plan for the current financial year, as precious time would be lost in securing clearances. Coal India wants to produce 457 Mt of coal this financial year.

Power minister Shinde raised concerns over the utilisation of the power capacity added in the last two years and for the current financial year, due to reduced coal production at the back of environment hurdles. Law minister Veerappa Moily said increasing the ‘Go’ areas from 53 per cent to 71 per cent by the environment ministry earlier, shows the earlier approach of ‘Go and No-Go’ was not clearly thought out. Commerce minister Anand Sharma pointed at the “larger issues” like revisiting the forest conservation programme.

Chairman of the GoM, Pranab Mukherjee, said the group of ministers should not focus on individual projects, but suggest amendments to the established law to address the ‘No-Go’ issue.