Anil Kumar Jha, who stepped down as Chairman, Coal India Limited, the Maharatna coal mining giant in January 2020 on attaining superannuation has been appointed as a Member of the Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) of Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India, through a Government gazette dated July 23. Jha will hold the office as Member of EAC for a term of one year till June 5, 2021.

The ten member committee consisting of a Chairman including Jha, as Member, assumes importance in safeguarding the overall environment status and also on the basis of merit advises environment clearances.

The Central Government has established an arrangement to appraise the projects, which have started the work without obtaining prior environmental clearance and such cases have been termed as cases of violation. The role of EAC comprising members with expertise in different sectors is to appraise and make recommendations to the Central Government as regards cases of violation in all the sectors. The work of this expert committee is to give advice on environmental clearances on different government projects.

According to Environment Impact Association notification 2006, the evaluations of different proposals have four stages that is screening, scoping, public hearing and appraisal. This committee was involved in various capacities in all the stages as mentioned except public hearing. Jha has three decades of experience in coal mining activities under his belt and has led CIL, the single largest coal producing company in the world, from May 2018 till January 2020.

Under his watch CIL has for the first time breached the 600 Million Tonne mark in coal production and off-take in 2018-19. He has initiated many evacuation infrastructure projects and logistics upgrades during his tenure as Chief of CIL.