Coal news and updates

Coal India unions rule out talks with govt

October 29: While charting out a long battle against the government’s alleged move to privatise the coal sector, the central trade unions of Coal India Ltd (CIL) have ruled out holding talks with the government.

“We had earlier sought to meet the coal minister to make clear our stand on the issues. But after the Ordinance, talks have become pointless,” a union source told ICMW.

“The Ordinance shows that the government has made up its mind about the future roadmap for the coal industry. Now, we have to chalk out our programme to counter that,” he said.

The unions, incidentally, had lauded the decision to de-allocate captive blocks, but demanded that these be given to CIL.

“The federation condemns its decision to introduce ‘e-auction’ (for allocation of blocks) and to house an enabling provision for commercial mining in the proposed Ordinance,” the union had stated in a statement on October 21.

Earlier, the unions had sought to meet coal and power minister Piyush Goyal in the first week of October but the meeting could not be held as the minister was busy with the fate of captive blocks following the Supreme Court judgment last month.