Coal news and updates

Govt may remove “Go” and “No Go” clause for mining of coal

July 2: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government is believed to be working on removing the “Go” and “No Go” clause for mining of coal in the country, a senior official of a leading coal producing company told ICMW.

“I think they (NDA) are going to remove the existing classification of “Go” and “No Go” area introduced during the regime of the Congress led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government” the official said.

If the existing classification is removed a large number of captive coal mining projects, which have been fallen under the “No Go” area classification, may expect to start work on their projects.

The “Go” and “No Go” classification was introduced by the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) in 2011 after Coal India Ltd (CIL) had suggested that to help them chalk out their production plan, the ministry should classify the forest areas under “Go” and “No Go” areas.

The logic behind coming out with such a demand was that the company was facing delays upto 10 years in getting forestry clearances for starting new projects.

“If I know beforehand that FC will not come in a particularly area, I will not focus on those projects and instead focus on projects that can get FC clearances,” a CIL official had explained.

Adhering to the demand, the UPA government come out with “Go” and “No Go” area classification for forest. Mining activity was allowed to be continued in “Go” areas, but there was almost complete stand-off in all the projects which had fallen under “No Go” area.

Incidentally, a large number of captive mining projects, including of some leading companies such as Adani Power, Reliance Power etc. had fallen under “No Go” area.

“Basically, things are moving under the new government,” the official felt.

“If things move fast, a number of projects, especially in Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd (MCL) and Central Coalfields Limited (CCL), may come up very fast because if special precautions are taken on major railway projects under infrastructure development,” the official added.

The three railway projects – Tori-Shivpur-Kathautia (93 Kms) in Jharkhand, Jharsuguda-Barpalli-Sardega (53 Km) in Odisha and Bhupdevpur-Korichapar-Dharamjaigarh (180 Kms) in Chattisgarh – are expected to help evacuation of as much as 200 million tons of coal annually on their completion and are expected to ease coal supply constraints in the country to great extent.