KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – Opening up of the Indian coal sector for commercial mining by private miners has officially been put on the backburner.

The move to open up commercial mining and auction off coal blocks to private miners for production without any end-use restrictions and a free pricing regime has been hanging fire since last year, with the federal government acknowledging a lack of consensus among various industry stakeholders and political uncertainties with the national elections scheduled within the next few months.

“With the country almost entering election mode, I think it will be difficult to hear anything on this soon. Maybe after a couple of months we will be able to make a bigger progress on this,” Joint Secretary of the Coal Ministry Ashish Upadhyaya said.

“When the policy for commercial coal mining by private miners was approved, labour, trade unions and other important stakeholders in the industry had apprehensions and fears that the conditions of pre-nationalization will come back. It is necessary for the government to allay those fears,” he said.

Since the decision to open up the coal sector was announced, all major trade unions operating in State-run coal companies, Indian National Trade Union Congress and the Centre for Indian Trade Unions have been threatening direct action, including strikes if the government went ahead with the auction of coal blocks to private miners and thereby signalling the end of government's monopoly and nationalization of the coal industry in 1973.

At the time of announcing the decision to approve the opening up of the coal sector, Coal Minister Piyush Goel said that private sector entry into coal mining would ensure higher efficiencies in mining, ramp up production and ease supply constraints currently being faced by various end-users and lower import dependency for the dry fuel.

According to industry estimates, Indian coal imports for January to April were pegged at 190-million tons, up 5.1% over the corresponding previous period, although during January 2019, inward shipments saw a slight decline at 17.25-million tons compared to 19.59-million tons shipped in during January 2018.