The Congress government in Telangana has urged the Center not to bank coal blocks in the state and allot them to mining firm Singareni Collieries Company Ltd (SCCL).
A day before the Hyderabad Coal Department launched its tenth coal mine auction, Deputy Chief Minister and Finance and Energy Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka said all mining areas in the state’s coal belt should be shared to SCCL.
The Vikramarka state government team will meet the Coal and Mines Minister G. Kishan Reddy on Friday and make a statement on the matter.
Addressing a press conference in Kamman with Agriculture Minister Tummala Nageswara Rao, the deputy minister said since SCCL is a public sector company, the government will seek allocation of new mines through by nominations, not by auctions. They said Singhrani’s livelihood would be in jeopardy if he was not given a new coal mine.
The ministers urged Kishan Reddy of Telangana to take part in allotment of mining sites to SCCL. According to Vikramarka, if necessary, the government will lead an all-party delegation to Delhi to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and request him to allot the mining sites to the SCCL to fulfill in demand after 2030. drilling in 40 mines. The mine will close by 2030, affecting SCCL’s 42,000 employees and 26,000 corporate employees. Currently 70 million tons will be reduced to 15 million tons.
The ministers demanded that the auctioned Sattupalli Koyagudem coal block be handed over to SCCL.
They said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BRS) supported a bill tabled in Parliament by the BJP government to withdraw coal mining rights from public companies. BRS MPs previously supported changes to the Mines and Minerals Act to force coal mining sales, but now the party opposes the auctions. They said that the then BRS government did not allow SCCL to enter the auction and ensured that the mining rights in the Koyagudem block were given to companies whose owners were close to the group. They claim that Singareni died during the BRS administration and said that the closure of the old blocks and the lack of allocations to the new blocks caused a drastic reduction in the number of workers.
