At least 74 miners were feared killed in a series of coal mine disasters in the Jharia coalfield area last night. While Coal India confirmed ten deaths in Bera, South Govindapur and Katras-Choitudih collieries in wall collapse and carbon dioxide gas, Bharat Coking Coal Ltd (BCCL), sources said chances of survival of 64 other miners, trapped in the Gaslitand colliery, were remote. In Gaslitand underground colliery, 64 miners were trapped when several columns of water from the nearby Katra Jore canal gushed in and flooded the mine around 2000 hours following unprecedented 15 cm of rain in about three hours on Tuesday night. When the water entered the pit, on duty were 91 miners of whom only 27 could rush out on an alarm raised by the mining sardar. The water level was of 30 metres in the pit nos four and five. The sources said, nine bodies had so far been recovered from Bera, South Govindapur and Katras-Choitudih collieries. CIL sources said in Bera colliery three miners were killed when a side wall collapsed at a time when the workers were being lifted from the pit. One miner was yet to be traced while another was being treated in a hospital.
WTO to scrutinise EU’s new import valuation
The European Union’s new import valuation system for grains, which had come as a major boost to Indian brown basmati exports, is all set to come under the scrutiny of a dispute settlement panel of the WTO as consultations between the US and the EU on this failed to get an amicable solution. The EU has rejected the US Government’s demand that the duty concessions provided to basmati rice from India and Pakistan be extended to ‘premium basmati-type’ rice produced in the US, it is learnt.