Transparent mines minister for putting all info up on website

NEW DELHI: Piyush Goyal, who got the charge of the mines ministry on Tuesday to go with his older portfolios of power, coal and renewable energy, has decided to

Published on: Jul 8, 2016, 07:09:27 IST

By Shishir Gupta

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

NEW DELHI: Piyush Goyal, who got the charge of the mines ministry on Tuesday to go with his older portfolios of power, coal and renewable energy, has decided to bring to mining the same transparency he gave to coal.

A senior official said the minister issued a directive on Wednesday, soon after taking charge at the mines ministry, that everything about its working must be placed on its website, including everything about leasing of mines, all queries, and right to information (RTI) applications. The ministry’s responses to RTI queries must also be placed on the site.

“This has to be done by month end and will ensure absolute transparency,” the official said.

Goyal, soon after he took charge of coal, brought in auctions to ensure fairness and quell the many controversies. Auctions played a big role in cleaning up the sector, which was reeling under the Supreme Court’s cancellations of several coal blocks allotted to private sector companies.

With time, Goyal succeeded in boosting the country’s coal production, which provided a breather to power companies since India produces 60% of its electricity from coal. According to industry chamber Ficci, India was in those days losing 0.4% of its GDP due to power shortages.

Soon, the coal availability at power plants increased from a low of two days’ stock in 2014 to a healthy 20 to 45 days’. Prime Minister Narendra-Modi, as part of his successful election campaign in 2014, had promised 24x7 electricity for all.

Mines is equally important to the country. However, the value of mineral output in the country declined by 11% in 2015-16 in spite of a 9% rise in volume. As Goyal said after taking charge: “Today it is clear that mining sector will grow fast. We will make sure that its share in GDP grows at least by one percentage point in next two to three years. We will analyse the mineral reserves and market conditions and decide which low hanging fruit to go for first.”

The ministry has already lined up 50 atomic mineral blocks and 100 others for auctions.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

Stay updated with the latest Business News, stock market updates, petrol and diesel prices, gold and silver rates, income tax updates and major developments from India and across the world.