The tussle between minister of forests and environment (MoEF) Jairam Ramesh and minister of coal Sriprakash Jaiswal for allowing coal extraction in forest areas continues unresolved with the Cabinet on Thursday having decided to constitute a group of ministers (GoM) to look into the issue of “no-go” mining areas.
The MoEF had designated about 30 per cent of 4,50,000 ha which have 206 coal blocks, as “no-go” areas for coal mining. The coal ministry opposed the demarcation saying it would hamper India’s economic growth as production capacity of 660 million tonnes per annum in 206 coal blocks falls in these “no go“ zones.
Keen to find a pragmatic solution to this problem, the Cabinet had referred the matter to a GoM likely to be headed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee. It would include other senior ministers including home minister P. Chidambaram, minister of mines B.K. Handique and deputy chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia apart from Ramesh and Jaiswal.
In a separate press interaction following the Cabinet meet, Mr Jaiswal had argued for the adoption of a development paradigm whereby growth would remain unaffected.
“Such a classification would result in the country facing a coal shortage of 500 million tones in the next few years. Already, India had been forced to import 83 million tones of coal in 2010-11,” Mr Jaiswal said.
Mr Ramesh had clarified repeatedly that he has no objection to underground mining. His ministry had a problem with open cast mining.
One of the suggestions that has been mooted in order to find a balance between exploitation of coal reserves and environment protection is to allow one part of a coal block to be opened up for mining at a time and after all its reserves are extracted, it could be afforested while mining could be moved to another block.
Such an approach could allow afforestation to take place in the earlier blocks, especially since the average time required to mine a block is approximately 40 years.
Mr Jaiswal enjoys the support of minister of power Sushilkumar Shinde, who has also complained to the Prime Minister the that power generation projects have been affected because 70 per cent of India’s power sector is coal fired.
Dr Ahluwalia also made the observation during the Cabinet meet that the “criteria used to establish what is ‘no-go’ should be very carefully defined and should be based on scientific considerations”. Last year, the finance minister had argued for the adoption of a more pragmatic approach to resolve this issue.