In a move, which has the potential of stirring the West Bengal politics in a big way, the Planning Commission on Thursday favoured denationalisation of coal sector and dismantling of Coal India Ltd’s monopoly in extracting and marketing the fossilised ore.
Talking to a select media representatives here, plan panel deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said, “It is my considered personal view that private participation be allowed in the coal sector, as state-owned coal monolith CIL is not able meet the growing demand in the country.”
Arguing that coal being the major source of primary energy to produce electricity, it is imperative that burgeoning demand-supply gap should substantially be met at the domestic level.
The advocacy for opening up the coal mining for private sector may, however, stir the hornet’s nest, as West Bengal, which is ruled by Mamta Banerjee-led Trinamul Congress and main Opposition in the state is the CPI(M), is the largest producer of coal in the country with Kolkata being the headquarters of CIL.
Both the ruling and Opposition parties in the state are opposed to allowing private enterprises entering coal mining activities. The other states, which produce coal, are Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh. Coal mining was nationalised by late Indira Gandhi government in 1973 on the plea that in the absence of government control, there existed a lot of mafia in the sector.
Moreover, Dr Ahluwalia also argued that coal is the least precious among the three sources of fossil fuel — oil, gas and coal — and if private participation can be allowed in cases of oil and gas, why can’t be coal sector be opened for private participation to further augment production.
Currently, only in case of captive utilisation, coal blocks are given to private power, steel, fertiliser and cement producing companies. Mr Ahluwalia insisted that the present system is not helping in giving desired result.
As per the data available with the government there exist a huge gap of 122 million tones between supply and demand despite the fact that CIL is sitting pretty on a cash surplus of `26,000 crores.
Even as agreement for fuel supply has been done in case of 114 power projects, the CIL could sign only in case 35 projects.