New Delhi: As many as 33 ongoing projects of Coal India Ltd are running behind schedule due to issues related to forestry clearances and land acquisition among others, Parliament was informed on February 26.
This comes at a time when the government has set an ambitious target for Coal India to achieve an output of one billion tonnes by 2019-20. "At present Coal India Ltd (CIL) has 33 ongoing projects, each costing Rs 100 crore and above that are behind schedule and have only time overrun," Coal and Power Minister Piyush Goyal said in a written reply to Lok Sabha.
However, he said, as of now they don't have any cost overrun. He further said of the projects where implementation is delayed, as many as 11 projects are running behind schedule due to issues related to forestry clearances, 10 projects are delayed due to problems like land acquisition and associated rehabilitation and resettlement issues.
"Five projects are delayed due to delay in finalisation of global tenders and commissioning of equipment, five projects are delayed due to evacuation issues and two projects due to environmental clearance issues," the minister said. Coal India (CIL) accounts for over 80 per cent of domestic coal production.
The CIL board had recently approved road-map for achieving one billion tonnes of coal production by FY'20 by the PSU and its subsidiaries along with a technological plan. As per the roadmap approved, CIL and its subsidiaries are expected to achieve 908.10 MT of coal production in 2019-20.
