Coal news and updates

IMG meet on June 10 to review BG issue of coal blocks

June 3: The 27th meeting of the Inter-Ministerial Group (IMG), under the chairmanship of the Additional Secretary (Coal), will take place on June 10, informed an official communique from the Ministry of Coal (MoC).

The meeting will undertake review of the issue of bank guarantees (BG) of coal blocks that had been reviewed at the 24th meeting of the IMG, held on February 7-8, 2014.

It may be recalled, at this meet, 61 coal blocks allocated to private companies and which had not come into production had been reviewed.

The allocatees of these 61 blocks had been issued notices by the MoC on January 15, 2014, requiring them to submit explanation with requisite documents by February 5, 2014 on the basis of which the review had been undertaken.

The IMG, at this meet, on the basis of the above and careful considerations of the explanations/documents and due deliberations thereon, had recommended de-allocation of around 27 blocks while no action had been proposed on the rest.

Many of these blocks had been unable to achieve environmental and forest Stage I clearances.