‘State hopeful to start mining at Deocha Pachami this month’

Kolkata: The state government is hopeful of commencing open-pit mining at the site of the proposed Deocha Pachami coal block at Mohammad Bazar in Birbhum from this month. Simultaneous underground mining is also likely to start at the same time.

Chief Secretary Manoj Pant held a meeting on Friday at the BDO office at Mohammad Bazar with senior officials of the state government, district administration, local administration, police top brass, including Director General of Police Rajeev Kumar and other stakeholders in order to fast track the mining work at Deocha Pachami coal block, following Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s dissatisfaction regarding the land acquisition process in connection with the coal block at the administrative review meeting at Nabanna Sabhaghar on Thursday.

“We have already identified 326-acre land to be made contiguous for open cast mining which will start with removal of overburden that includes basalt, blackstone etc. The work is expected to start in 15- 20 days. Considering the fact that underground mining may be essential as coal is located very deep, the bidding process has already been initiated by the West Bengal Power Development Corporation Ltd with the last date for the same being February 3. Both the overcast mining work and underground mining may go simultaneously,” Pant said.

He added that minerals like basalt, blackstone are the state’s assets and hence it should be removed with utmost care.

The Chief Secretary further stated that arrangements will be made to extract coal by displacing as few people as possible. “We have chosen a less disruptive area so that the mining work is less disruptive to the best possible extent,” he maintained.

The Chief Secretary said that many people have already given consent for taking their land for the project with the rehabilitation package announced by the Chief Minister eliciting spontaneous response. “There will be huge employment from the local people once the project gets completed,” he said.

Deocha Panchami is going to be the second largest coal mine in the world. The state government had announced that a total of 3,400 acres of land would be acquired for the coal mining project. The compensation and rehabilitation package for this project was announced in 2021.