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KOLKATA, April 14

THOUGH powers currently exercised by Coal India Ltd (CIL) relating to procurement of all items, except explosives, as well as powers relating to marketing of coal in the non-core sector will be delegated to its producing subsidiaries, there is no plan to wind up CIL, according to Mr A.P.V.N. Sarma, Joint Secretary in the Union Ministry of Coal & Mines.

Talking to newspersons here on Monday on the sidelines of a seminar on `Clean coal technology for India coal', Mr Sarma said CIL would continue to remain a holding company for all its subsidiaries. It would henceforth play a `holistic' role for monitoring, supervising and guiding its subsidiaries so that the latter could improve their bottom line and face challenges in the emerging coal market.

In reply to a question, he said although steel plants, at the request of the Union Ministry of Steel, had been given special permission to sell the surplus quantity of coking coal produced by them from their captive coal mines, the same permission would not be extended to other manufacturing sectors having captive coal mines for the production of non-coking coal.

He said domestic coal companies should not be worried about imported coal because the import could not be a permanent solution for bulk coal consumers located far away from the ports. Domestic coal would, in fact, be preferred because of the easy availability. Moreover, the quality of domestic coal was expected to improve substantially with the introduction of new technology, he felt.

Earlier, speaking at the seminar, organised by Coal Consumers' Association of India (CCAI), Mr R.K. Chechani, Chairman-cum-Managing Director of Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd (MCL), said that his company has been able to bring down the cost of production by introducing surface mining technology. As a result, MCL had decided not to increase coal prices.

Mr Chechani pointed out that the quality of domestic coal had considerably deteriorated due to heavy mechanisation wherein it became difficult to remove the impurities such as shale, sand stone etc, being mined along with coal. The domestic coal industry had to look for new vistas in re-engineering and technological reorientation. Surface miner appeared to be a viable alternative being capable of mining quality coal in highly inter-banded seams thereby improving quality.

He said MCL had already put 15 surface miners in operation. The number of such miners would be doubled during the current fiscal so that the company could produce at least 50 per cent of its targeted production through surface mining technology as against 30 per cent production it had done using surface miner during the 2002-03 fiscal.

In his welcome address, Mr Gautam Kumar, President of CCAI, said the use of washed coal would reduce the release of particulate matter and other obnoxious gases to the cleaner ambient air. Since CIL had already expressed its inability to set up and run coal washeries because of huge capital expenditure, he observed that private sector's participation was almost inevitable for setting up coal washeries in the country.

Mr Kumar highlighted certain problems faced by coal consuming industries. These included the short supply of `Grade-B' non-coking coal, charging of premium on source-specific coal by Central Coalfields Ltd, user-unfriendly norms in the Fuel Supply Agreement and problems of grade slippage and shortage.

He urged CIL authorities to address these problems by installing Coal Handling Plants (CHPs) with fully mechanised loading systems and installation of electronic weighbridges at the loading points.

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