The Union Railway Minister, Mr Dinesh Trivedi, today announced firm plans to take up the long neglected cause of “last mile connectivity” to help increase coal output.

The announcement came on a day when CIL was asked to enhance production by over seven per cent to 464 million tonne in 2012-13, as part of its MoU with the Union Coal Ministry.

In his Budget speech on Wednesday Mr Trivedi said that railways in collaboration with the ministries of coal, power and shipping “sanctioned 17 projects” to offer the first and last mile connectivity. Another 28 such projects are identified to be taken up in due course.

“Railways will interact with the concerned utility stakeholders to take the process .. forward, largely through PPP (private-Public-partnership) route,” the Minister.

Though full details of such proposals were not available, a top CIL official said that the company had already identified three such projects in Chhattishgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa to be taken up during the Twelfth Plan period. CIL has already expressed interest to bear majority of the estimated total cost of Rs 6,000 crore towards the projects.

The projects include two rail links connecting the 200-million-tonne-per-annum Mand-Raigarh deposits in Chhattishgarh; the 100 km Tori-Shibpur-Hazaribagh link to unlock nearly 100 mtpa from Jharkhand; and connectivity to the rich coal assets in Ib-Valley in Orissa.

“We have already taken steps towards implementation of Mand-Raigarh rail link projects in collaboration with other users,” the CIL official said.

According to him, in addition to CIL such projects will also be of help to large number of captive block owners.

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