Parliament Standing Committee discusses production of coal, lignite

<p id="content">The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Coal and Steel on Monday discussed issues related to production of coal and lignite as well as planning in different coal fields in India.

The meeting was held in Parliament premises at 11.30 a.m.

The 31-member committee, including 21 Lok Sabha members and 10 Rajya Sabha members, discussed "production of coal and lignite, its projection and planning with specific reference to performance of Western Coalfields Limited and Central Coalfields Limited".

Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) leader and Member of Parliament from Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh, Rakesh Singh, chaired the committee which was reconstituted on September 13 this year.

Coal Controller's Organisation granted permission for opening and re-opening of nine coal or lignite mines during April 1, 2019 to December, 31, 2019.

There has been a continuous increase in overall consumption of coal over the years. Consumption or actual supply of coal (including imports) increased from 836.93 million tonnes in 2016-17 to 968.03 million tonnes in 2018-19.

As per data provided by Coal India Limited (CIL) and Coal Controller's Organisation (CCO), demand for coal for 2019-20 was estimated at 1,000 million tonnes against which, actual supply of coal in 2019-20 up to December, 2019 (provisional) was 695.49 Million metric tonne (Mte).

In 2019-20, the production of coal by the CIL (April-Dec.19) was 388.39 Mte.as against the annual target of 660 Mte. The Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) produced 46.75 Mte of coal during 2019-20 against the annual target of 67 Mte during this period.

The Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC) had a target of 25.56 Mte of lignite for 2019-20 against which actual production (April – December 2019) of lignite was 17.01 Mte for the year 2019-20 and the projected production of lignite for the period January 2020 to March 2020 was 8.55 Mte.

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