Send coal block proposals on time: Centre to States

The Centre has asked all the states to send proposals without delay for clearances of coal blocks that were either rejected by the environment ministry on account of falling into no mining zone or have been pending for long.

"It is requested that proposals for forests and environment clearance which were rejected. And the proposal which were kept pending at various levels may be further processed and send to MoEF for consideration/clearance without delay," said a Coal Ministry letter to chief secretaries of all coal bearing states.

The country is facing an acute coal shortage of estimated 137 million tonne this fiscal.

A ministerial panel, that was constituted to iron out issues impeding dry fuel production, has decided to do away with the contentious 'go' and 'no go' classification by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF).

The letter said that the group of ministers has accepted the recommendations to do away with Go/No Go categorisation.

The MoEF will revert back to its practice of examining the project by Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) on case by case basis, the letter said.

"On the issue of Go/No Go, the minister of Environment and Forest agreed,  that it should not form the basis for clearance or rejection of coal blocks."

"Ministry (MoEF) will revert back to their original pace of examining the project by FAC on case by case based on merit, including the project rejected based on the Go/No Go approach earlier. The GoM finally accepted the recommendation to do away with the Go/No concept," it said.

Last year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had approved the formation of GoM, headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, to sort out environmental issues hurting coal production.

Coal and Environment Ministries had locked horns over the issue after the latter had in 2009 classified 203 coal blocks under 'no go' area prohibiting mining there, impacting 660 million tonne coal production per annum.

The coal shortage which touched 84 million tonne in the last fiscal is likely to soar to 137 million tonne in the current fiscal.