MINISTER OF THE STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF COAL (DR. DASARI NARAYANA RAO)
(a) & (b) : The coal mines in the country were nationalized during 1971-73 in two phases.
The private coal mining leases that existed after such nationalization were terminated in
1976 allowing only the iron and steel producers in the private sector to mine coal only for
captive use for production of iron and steel. The Coal Mines (Nationalisation) Act. 1973
was amended in 1993 in order to allow private sector participation in coal mining for captive
use for purpose of power generation as well as for other captive end uses to be notified
from time to time. Subsequently captive coal mining was also allowed for production of
cement, by a notification issued in 1996.
(c) to (f): The Government, after taking into account the legal opinion received from the
learned Attorney General of India, through the Ministry of Law have decided to allow coal
mining by an independent mining company on the condition of issuing a Notification under
Section 3(3) (a) (iii) (4) of the Coal Mines (Nationalisation) Act, 1973 that the entire
mined coal would be transferred to the end user company/companies for the specific end uses.
Accordingly, the guidelines for allocation of coal blocks have been amended and placed on
the web site of the Ministry.
Some of the companies who were offered captive coal blocks expressed their difficulties to
do coal mining in the country on the ground of lack of experience in coal mining. Keeping
in view the difficulty experienced by such companies, the decision to offer coal blocks to
independent mining companies also was taken.
