Act or face action: Govt to Coal India

Egged by environment minister Jairam Ramesh, the coal minister Shriprakash Jaiswal on Tuesday told Coal India officials that action will be taken against them if they fail to meet the targets.

Updated on: May 11, 2011, 24:43:41 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Egged by environment minister Jairam Ramesh, the coal minister Shriprakash Jaiswal on Tuesday told Coal India officials that action will be taken against them if they fail to meet the targets.

Ramesh in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said that over 50 million tones of coal has accumulated at the coal pitheads for want of adequate evacuation facilities, for which his ministry cannot be blamed.

Coal minister has blamed delay in getting environment and forest clearances for the sector not been able to meet its annual production target of 452 million tones.

"Wanting to be of help, I pointedly asked the coal minister whether MoEF is responsible for this situation," Ramesh told the PM, in his letter. Jaiswal told Ramesh that lack of rail facilities was a reason for that the coal could not be lifted.

The Coal minister told officials of Coal India and its subsidiaries that there should be full evacuation and transport of coal from the pitheads. "Coal should reach the consumers in time...it is duty of Chairman and Managing directors to ensure that it happens," he told them.

Addressing another issue raised by Ramesh at a recent Group of Minister's meeting, Jaiswal told officials to come out with a new attractive relief and rehabilitation package for those affected by coal mining, which covers all aspects of dealing with poverty near coal mining areas. A committee headed by coal secretary will be set up to revise the R&R package.

Ramesh has told the GoM that the Coal India had a poor track record in relief and rehabilitation. "This has led to the district magistrates not issuing no objection certificate for revenue forest land, delay in Forest Rights Act compliance and acrimony at public hearings for environmental clearances," the minister said, in his presentation to the GoM.

The coal minister has also made the CMD sole responsible for getting the no objection certificates from the district magistrates and said that any "laxity" will not be tolerated. "If you (CMDs) fail to meet the targets you will be taken to task," Jaiswal told them.

Ramesh had made a scathing attack on Coal India at the recent GoM blaming it for delay in getting environment and forest clearances, rather than his ministry and cited specific instances where the country's one of the richest public sector undertaking has failed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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