Ranchi: The underground fire in Jharia, coupled with unauthorised human settlements in and around land subsidence-prone zones, is holding back Bharat Coking Coal Limited’s (BCCL) potential to achieve an annual production target of 100 million tonne, its newly-appointed chairman cum managing director (CMD) Gopal Singh said on Tuesday.
“I have headed BCCL twice. In one of my stints as the head of Central Coalfields Limited (CCL), I was given BCCL’s additional charge. I am aware of the Jharia Master Plan and my objective will be to sit with all the stakeholders and find a solution to the problems so that BCCL’s production capacity increases,” Singh told the media at the CCL headquarters (Darbhanga House) in Ranchi before relinquishing his charge and heading to Dhanbad.
Singh, who served as the CMD of Ranchi-based Coal India Limited subsidiary CCL since March 2012, was on Monday evening appointed as the CMD of BCCL in a notification issued by the Union government’s secretariat of the appointments committee of the cabinet. Singh was also appointed as the interim chairman of Coal India Limited in September 2017. A formal notification from the Union coal ministry and the CIL is yet to follow. Singh, who superannuates on January 31 next year, will swap places with BCCL’s CMD P M Prasad, who will take over as the newCMD of CCL.
Singh, an alumnus of ISM Dhanbad, worked in CCL’s various projects for two decades and was its CMD for 8.5 years. When he took over in 2012, CCL’s annual production hovered around 48 MT per annum. In the 2019-20 FY, CCL produced 68 MT coal. In the ongoing fiscal, CCL has set itself a target of producing 84 MT coal, but its production suffered in the first two quarters due to a slump in industrial demand due to the lockdown.
Maintaining that coal-based energy still accounts for fulfilling India’s 75% annual power needs, Singh added that the implementation of the Jharia Master Plan was crucial for the turnaround of BCCL, which was once termed as a sick PSU after its net worth was wiped out due to accumulated losses to the tune of Rs 5,600 crore in 2012. “Against India’s 700 MT annual coal requirements, we procure 242 MT from outside. CCL and BCCL are the only two CIL subsidiaries which produce good quality coking coal and hence, BCCL’s turnaround is crucial to bridge the supply gap,” Singh told the TOI. BCCL’s production target for this fiscal is 34 MT.
Expressing satisfaction with his stint at CCL, Singh said during his tenure, the PSU was able to clear the pending clearances and bottlenecks and commission projects which will augment its production capacity up to 200 MTPA (including the 75MTPA Magadh, 35 MTPA Amrapali and the 20 MTPA Sanghamitra open cast coal projects).
“We were also able to eliminate the problem of coal evacuation from our mines after the Mccluskieganj-Piparwar and Sheopur-Tori railway lines, which were pending completion since being envisioned in 2000, were completed by 2018,” Singh said.
