The Government hopes a consensus
will soon evolve on opening of coal sector for commercial mining, a
bill for which has been pending for past seven years, Coal Minister Sriprakash
Jaiswal said today.
The bill will come up for
consideration of the House after “consensus is built,” he said during
Question Hour in Rajya Sabha.
On how long the exercise of
building consensus would take, he said it was the responsibility of both the
ruling party and the opposition.
The bill is to amend the existing
Act governing coal mining, which allows only PSUs to undertake mining besides
permitting private firms to extract coal for captive use. The bill has been
pending in Parliament for want of political consensus amid opposition by trade
unions.
Jaiswal said coal production has
not increased on expected line, causing energy shortages.
Land acquisition and law and
order problems in coal bearing areas are major reasons for the shortfall, he
said adding the government is encouraging coal-users like power plants to
looking at opportunities to import coal to meet the deficit.
According to government
estimates, India, with a demand for 696 million tons of coal faces a deficit of
142 million tons.
Source: The Economic Times
Leave a Reply