KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) - The Indian government’s frantic efforts to push through legislative reforms in the coal sector have hit a roadblock from the ruling party’s own trade union wing.
Trade union Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), the labour organisation allied to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has raised a red flag on several points of the new legislation that the BJP-led federal government wanted to rush in the current session of Parliament, which commenced November 24.
In October, the government promulgated the Coal Mines (Special) Provisions Ordinance 2014 to pave the way for auctioning of 204 coal block licences which were cancelled by the Supreme Court in the previous month. The ordinance needed to be ratified by the Parliament into an Act within six months.
Having already announced the schedule for the coal block auction starting on February 11, 2015, and completion of the process with the award of the blocks by March 6, the onus was on the government to complete the legislative process in the current session of Parliament.
However, in a communication to Coal and Power Minister Piyush Goyal, BMS claimed that while the government’s goal was "optimal utilisation of natural resources through greater participation of the private sector", a lack of inter-Ministerial coordination was the root problem and not undermining by Coal India Limited (CIL).
“CIL has worked to an optimal capacity but the government is to be faulted for not creating adequate infrastructure for increasing production,” the trade union has pointed out to the government.
BMS was the country’s largest trade union with a membership roll of 10.25-million and a major presence in most government-owned public sector companies, including CIL.
Government officials said that all trade unions across the country were opposed to the coal sector reform legislation, which would permit private miners to extract coal. However, the government’s main concern at this point was placating BMS.
All major trade unions announced a one-day strike in the coal sector on November 24, but this was called off after the government was able to convince BMS to back off, at least until further consultations with it.
The government, for its part, would try to impress upon BMS that the legislation was not privatisation of the coal sector but a response to the Supreme Court verdict cancelling 214 coal blocks allotted to various companies since 1993.
The trade unions would have to appreciate that to achieve energy security and reduce import dependency it was imperative to achieve coal production of 1-billion tons a year, which would only be achieved if more players were permitted to extract coal, which was the aim of the new legislation, government officials said.