Govt mulls framing policy on using rejects from coal washeries

A committee will assess the actual rejects generated from CIL washeries and formulate suitable guidelines for supply of rejects

The government is mulling framing a policy to utilise coal rejects generated from washeries, amid the country reeling under acute fuel shortage.

Coal quality is enhanced by coal washing and the plant where coal washing is carried out is called coal washery.

"In accordance with the decision taken in the meeting of the Standing Linkage Committee (Long Term) for power...It has been decided to formulate a policy for allocation of coal/washery rejects generation by CIL for washery rejects based power plants," according to a Coal Ministry document.

An inter-ministerial committee, under the Chairmanship of Additional Secretary Coal, is meeting this week for the first time to deliberate on the same.

The committee which has representative from the ministries, including power, will "assess the actual rejects generated from Coal India (CIL) washeries and formulate suitable guidelines for supply of rejects on long-term basis from CIL washeries."

It will also "assess the actual coal demand of the washery rejects based power plants and to formulate suitable guidelines for issue of long term coal linkage for these power plants keeping in view the overall availability position."

The panel had also suggested that the coal ministry "may consider issue of linkage for supply of rejects where requested to meet the requirement of reject based power plants.

The rejects may be supplied against linkage by the coal companies/CIL under a policy to be put in place by MoC (Ministry of Coal) in consultation with CIL.

CIL, which accounts for over 80% of the domestic production, yesterday said the production output target of 482 million tonnes (MT) for the ongoing fiscal looks challenging in view of the shutdown of mining activities in Talcher Coalfields in Odisha, and Cyclone Phailin.

State-run CIL contributed 452.5 MT of coal in the previous financial year compared with the target of 464 MT.