KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) - India’s Steel Ministry has mandated Mecon, a government-owned engineering consultancy, to prepare a study for the revival of the Jharia coalfields, in eastern India, identifying foreign technical expertise in underground fire control and appropriate technology for the revival of defunct mines.

The latest attempt to revive coal mining in the region, often referred to as a ‘cremation ground’ for its raging underground fires, through appropriate evacuation of infrastructure and control of underground fires was aimed at bolstering domestic coking coal supplies. Of the estimated 11-billion tonnes of coal reserves in the Jharia belt, in the eastern province of Jharkhand, 80% was of prime coking coal grade.

Steel Secretary G Mohan Kumar had already issued orders to Mecon to conduct a survey of the Jharia coalfields and submit a report within the next three months, a Mecon official said.

Mining of the Jharia coalfields started in 1896, underground fires were first detected in 1916 and these started spreading across the belt in 1970, engulfing several villages. The mines traversed 450 km², with over 70 fires raging underground resulting in subsidence of 35 km² impacting 120 urban and rural settlements with a population of 1.1-million. The region has about 40 workable coal seams.

To address the underground fires, the Coal Ministry had approved and put in play a $1.14-billion Fire, Subsidence, Rehabilitation Master Plan; however, implementation of the project has been only partial owing to reluctance to rehabilitation, decades-long unorganised cultivation, opposition from small-scale industry and business and a thriving parallel economy based on illegal mining by locals.

According to officials, studies conducted across the coalfields so far, indicated that it could be possible to adapt opencast mining across 70% to 80% of the region subject to the "removal of [such] surface constraints" as habitat, construction, cultivation and illegal mining.