With the State Government harping on its demand for reallocation of the five de-allocated coal blocks to the State’s public sector undertakings (PSUs), it has been decided to continue the land acquisition process in only two coal block zones.
Chief Secretary JK Mohapatra chaired a high-level meeting on Thursday to take stock of the land acquisition process in two of the de-allocated coal blocks. Out of the five de-allocated coal blocks, land acquisition is in progress in the Utkal-D and New Patrapada coal blocks.
Administrative approval for land acquisition had not been given to the other three coal blocks, Baitarani West, Mandakini-B and Naini, in the Talcher coalfields, which were also de-allocated. So, land acquisition has not been initiated for these blocks, informed Principal Secretary of Steel & Mines Rajesh Verma.
In the meantime, all the five coal blocks have been de-allocated by the Union Ministry of Coal (MoC). However, the State Government is insisting on the Union Government to reallocate these coal blocks as due to proactive measures undertaken by the State Government and a congenial atmosphere created for investment, a large number of investors have set up industrial projects.
And the requirement of the projects is assessed at about 250 million tonnes per annum, for which coal reserve of about 10,000 MT would be required.
Taking this requirement into consideration, the State Government has time and again asked the MoC not to allocate the coal blocks to any other party except the State’s mining PSU till the requirements of coal for the State-based projects are met.
Against this backdrop, it was decided to continue the land acquisition process in Utkal-D, where 654 acres of land would be required for operation of the coal block. This was exclusively allocated to the Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC), which has been de-allocated.
Similarly, the New Patrapada coal block would need 2,749 acres of land. This block was given to Bhusan Steel limited and seven other private companiesn but now it stands de-allocated.
During the last one year, a total of 47 coal blocks have been de-allocated in the country out of a total 218 allocated. And on consideration of the representations from coal block allottees, de-allocation letters in respect of five coal blocks have been withdrawn and two blocks have been reallocated.
Recently, the MoC invited applications from State and Central PSUs for allocation of 14 coal blocks, of which five belong to Odisha. It has allocated Tentuloi in favour of the Odisha Thermal Power Corporation limited (OTPCl), but the Odisha Power Generation Corporation (OPGC) and the OMC have been denied any coal blocks.