An ‘Addendum and Corrigendum’ to the Concession Agreement between South East Central Railway (SECR) and Chhattisgarh East Railway limited (CERl) for Phase-I of East Rail Corridor project was signed on March 21, 2017, an official press release informed here.
The agreement was signed in presence of B.R. Reddy, Chairman and Managing Director, South Eastern Coalfields ltd (SECl), A.P. Panda, Director (Finance), SECl, Dr. R.S. Jha, Director (Personnel), SECl, Kuldeep Prasad, D.T.O, SECl, P.K. Sinha, DTPP, SECl, S.l. Gupta, Director CERl and other senior officials of SECR, SECl, CERl & IRCON.
G.M.S Naidu, C.T.P.M., SECR, Bilaspur and B.Chowdhury, CEO CERl signed the agreement on behalf of SECR and CERl respectively.
The concession agreement between SECR and CERl was signed on June 12, 2015. However due to better operational issues the project now includes feeder lines to ensure end to end connectivity from coal mines to end user’s premises.
This is considered to be a significant milestone in ensuring faster implementation of the East Rail Corridor Phase-I project which will also ensure availability of Rail system to the remote villages of Raigarh district of Chhattisgarh, it stated.
Notably, SECl is targetting total coal production of 250 million tonnes (MT) from its underground and open cast mines by 2019-20, officials stated.
The company recorded coal production (provisional) of 12.10 million tonnes (MT) against target of 11.70 MT as on February 2016, Coal India ltd had informed the Bombay Stock Exchange in its filing.
Notably, the Coal India ltd is targetting production of 1 billion tonnes of coal by 2020. Wagon availability will be a key factor for achieving this target , officials stated.
Notably, the Central government has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding each with the states of Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh for critical coal connectivity projects to improve transportation of coal, officials informed.
Notably, the South East Central Sector which includes Chhattisgarh is also set to play a key role in Central government’s ambitious coal loading and transportation plans.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed recently between Ministry of Railways and Coal India limited (CIl) which will lead to procurement of 2000 wagons (33 rakes) in the first outgo, officials stated.
The agreement which will result into speedy supply of wagons for coal loading in dedicated circuits.
Initially, the rakes will be inducted and run in the 2 main coal loading Zones of Indian Railways i.e South East Central coal sector and East Coast circuit.
These rakes will be inducted in circuits for transporting coal from MCl Talcher & IB area and SECl to Paradip/Dharma ports, Vishakhapatnam area and the power houses of Nagpur/Raipur region.
Under this strategic partnership, the wagons will be procured by Indian Railways on behalf of CIl, the maintenance of these wagons will be done by Railways at its own cost. Also, the brake vans will be provided by Railways itself.
SECl has put its underground (UG) coal production target projections at 22 million tonnes (MT) by 2019-20.
The company compared to its underground coal excavation target by the aforesaid period has set a significantly higher coal production target projections from its open cast (OC) mines at 228 MT, officials stated.
Notably, SECl has commenced the process for setting up the 5.0 MTPA Baroud Coal Washery in Raigarh district of the State.
The Washery will be set up on Build-Operate-Maintain (BOM) basis.
It may be recalled that SECl will provide the capital funding for setting up of the Washery and also other infrastructural facilities like land, water, power etc.
Notably, the Central Government has also decided to transport coal above G10 level only after being washed from October 1, 2017. The decision is taken to tackle the quality issue of the coal produced.
In order to meet the rising demand, Coal India ltd has been setting up 15 new washeries with a total capacity of 112.6 million tonnes per annum. Out of these washeries, six are Coking Coal washeries with total capacity of 18.6 million tonnes per annum and nine Non-Coking washeries of 94.0 million tonnes per annum. Apart from these, 3 washeries of 11.6 million tonnes per annum are under construction, officials stated.
Notably, CIl has decided to set up washeries in its various subsidiaries to reduce the quantity of ash and other not useful component from coal so as to make it competitive in comparison to imported coal across the country.