<p>Order of the National Green Tribunal (Eastern Zone Bench, Kolkata) in the matter of Ajay Rajak Vs Ministry of Coal & Others dated 04/07/2023.</p> <p>The matter is related to illegal coal mines
NEW DELHI: Coal India Ltd (CIL) has gone out of its way to sign fuel supply pacts with 11 companies, including alleged Coalgate beneficiaries, even before these firms reached the qualifying milestones such as acquiring land, the state-run monopoly's internal anti-corruption watchdog has said. In a report to the coal ministry, a copy of which is available with TOI, CIL's CVO (chief vigilance officer) Manoj Kumar said supply pacts for 5,935 mw — or one-and-a-half times of the national capital's daily requirement — have either been inked or cleared for signing in spite of "deficiencies in documents".A fuel supply agreement (FSA) holds the key to disbursal of institutional funding for power projects.
With delays plaguing 39 coal mining projects, the coal ministry has decided to approach the Cabinet Committee on Investment (CCI) for clearing the hurdles. The newly-formed CCI is expected to take up these projects in its next meeting likely within a fortnight. In a note to the CCI on December 27, the coal ministry said while delayed environment clearances may wreak havoc on its production plans, there are other bottlenecks which have hampered operations of its planned power projects entailing an investment of nearly Rs 14,000 crore.
With delays plaguing 39 coal mining projects, the coal ministry has decided to approach the Cabinet Committee on Investment (CCI) for clearing the hurdles. The newly-formed CCI is expected to take up these projects in its next meeting likely within a fortnight. In a note to the CCI on December 27, the coal ministry said while delayed environment clearances may wreak havoc on its production plans, there are other bottlenecks which have hampered operations of its planned power projects entailing an investment of nearly Rs 14,000 crore.
The newly-formed Cabinet Committee on Investment (CCI) is likely to approve automatic extension of environment clearances when it meets on Thursday, sources said. The move will not only do away with the tedious process of environment and forest clearance, but also free up over 65 million tonne (MT) additional coal annually, according to sources. Last year, the environment ministry had made it mandatory for companies setting up projects to obtain forest clearance (FC) before applying for environment clearance (EC), where diversion of forest land is required. The guideline was later modified, allowing parallel processing for both EC and FC.
Australian energy major MetroCoal Ltd has approached NTPC for forming a joint venture for developing that country’s biggest coal mine and ship the fuel for firing the state-run generation utility’s power
The Supreme Court’s questioning last week of the Centre’s authority to allocate coal blocks during the hearing of a public interest litigation regarding the ‘coalgate’ will have major implications for
NEW DELHI: Delhi surrendered its allotment of 2,083 mw, or more than half its current daily demand, from November 1 even as the city suffered widespread blackouts between second week of that month and continued till the first week this month. While CM Sheila Dixit talked tough and ordered discoms to tie up supplies in advance to avoid similar outages in summer, senior state government officials blamed lower generation at state-run NTPC's power plant at Dadri as a result of fog disrupting rail service and delaying coal supply.
A nine-member ministerial panel headed by Finance Minister P Chidambaram will meet on Monday to finalise the draft of a Bill to set up a coal regulator, said a coal ministry official. This is the second meeting of the panel, which had met for the first time in July 2012. The meeting comes on the backdrop of the ministry’s proposal that pricing power of the commodity should remain with coal producing companies. The ministry wants the proposed regulator to decide the method for fixing prices to check abuse of monopoly by any producer. Currently, state-owned Coal India Ltd (CIL) accounts for 82 per cent of the domestic 530-million-tonne yearly coal production.
CIL subsidiary alleged to have compromised mine safety Bharat Coking Coal (BCCL), a subsidiary of Coal India (CIL), has come under the Competition Commission of India (CCI) scanner for floating a vendor-biased global tender against the country’s competition rule, thereby compromising the safety of mines. A source in the CCI told FE that BCCL floated a tender in November 2012 asking for Mine Slope Stability Monitoring Radar. But the specifications given were out dated and not vendor neutral. The specification only supported one technology — Real Aperture Radar (RAR) system.
Sounding a strong warning, including severe shortage of coal for thermal power plants, the Coal Ministry has predicted serious implications for the southern States of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and many northern and western States if important railway lines connecting coal fields in Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh are not completed in the next three years. In a note to the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the Railways, the Coal Ministry has stated that it would not be possible for the State-run Coal India Limited (CIL) to achieve either the targeted production of 615 million tonnes of coal by 2016-17 or any incremental coal production during the 12th Five Year Plan if the railway tracks in these three coal producing States are not put in place in the next three years.
