Coal India subsidiary Eastern Coalfields hopes to clock a 46 per cent growth in production in 2023-24 having achieved a key breakthrough in land acquisition.

Eastern Coalfields officials told The Telegraph that the company has set a target of 51 million tonnes (mt) production in 2023-24 against 35mt produced in 2022-23. Capital expenditure of Rs 1,250 crore has been earmarked for FY24 to support production, which is up from around Rs 1,104 crore in FY23.

“A growth of 8 per cent production in 2022-23 was possible mainly due to improved production from Sonepur Bazari which achieved peak production of 12mt with an increase of 2.37mt over last year. This was facilitated by taking entire possession of forest land through tree felling in a 32-hectare land area and rehabilitation of 700 PAPs (project affected persons) of Sonepur Village,” a senior official of ECL said.

ECL has also achieved a major breakthrough in land acquisition at the Rajmahal open-cast mine where production was significantly halted in the last two years due to non-physical possession of land and local resistance to land acquisition. Production fell to 5.38mt in the last fiscal from 5.47mt a year ago and 17mt in 2018-19.

“There was a breakthrough in land possession in January 18, 2023 after a lot of efforts and with the active co-operation of Jharkhand district administration. Some coal production was possible from Taljhari mouza at the end of March. Land required for production from Taljhari mouza during FY24 is being possessed gradually and hopefully we shall be able to resume normal production level during the current fiscal,” the official said.

The planned production from the Rajmahal area is estimated at around 16.4mt in 2023-24.

ECL officials further said that three mine developer and operator projects have already been awarded — Hura-C (3mt), Belbaid (2.07mt), and Tilaboni (1.86mt) — which will substantially increase the production level of the coal subsidiary in a couple of years.

“We have also offered four abandoned mines on revenue sharing concept which will significantly contribute to an increase in production level and more are in pipeline. Additionally, two high wall mining projects are going to start production in the current fiscal year,” the official said.