NEW DELHI, JUN 28: Underground coal mining production has taken a big hit over the years. Currently, the total underground mining production is about 45-50 million tonne.
This is quite low compared with the 1970s when it was 65 million tonne.
“There has been a sharp decline in under ground mining coal production. At the time of Coal Mining (Nationalisation) Act, 1973, under ground coal mining production constituted 70% of the total coal production in the country but now it only constitute 15%,†a senior government official said.
The dip in the under ground coal production is a matter of concern and if things do not improve, the country is likely to face a severe shortage of coal in the next 20 to 30 years, he added.
Coal is produced from two types of mines—opencast and under ground mining. Presently, in India 85% of the coal is produced from opencast mining. Opencast mining is done at the surface rather than underground. India produced 360 million tonne of coal in 2006-07. The reason behind the decline in production is primarily because of India’s failure to successfully adopt the longwall technique for under ground coal mining.
A senior Coal India official said, “Basically, when longwall machines were imported in the 1980’s, adequate homework was not done. We were unable to track default. The lapse led to losses as longwall machines are very costly and we were unable to replace defective machine, resulting in decline of production.â€
In longwall mining the roof of the under ground mining is allowed to fall in a planned sequence. As a result more coals can be mined during longwall mining. Besides, longwall machines support the roof and protects the miner. In India there are 300 under ground coal mining blocks. Most of the mines are mined using brod & pillar technique. Brod & pillar technique are used in two ways – manual and mechanised. More than half of the under ground mining is done manually, resulting in lesser production.
Longwall mining helps mine more coal than brod and pillar technique. An expert committee on roadmap for coal sector reforms headed by T L Shankar committee too has expressed concern over the downfall of under ground coal mining production and urged for steps for earliest remedy. With file information from: financialexpress.com
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