Following the recent coking coal supply pact with Russia, India has formed an Inter-Ministerial Committee dedicated to augmenting domestic coking coal production. The Ministry of Coal has set up “Mission Coking Coal” to create a road map for increasing production and utilisation of domestic coking coal, Kallanish notes.

The committee has recommended identifying additional coking coal blocks and auctioning them to Coal India (CIL) and the private sector for coal production. It advised to adopt advanced technology for coking coal beneficiation and to develop a policy framework for washery reject disposals.

The ministerial committee also suggested allocating CIL linkages to private washeries setting up coking coal washeries on an aggregator model basis. Also, an import-parity-based pricing mechanism should be formulated for domestic coking coal, factoring in quality parameters.

To utilise domestic coking coal, the committee has advocated implementing stamp charging technology and investing more into R&D initiatives for redesigning blast furnaces to work on domestic coal grades. The committee suggested introducing an incentive-based framework to motivate and encourage domestic steel mills to improve technology.

It also suggested providing tax incentives to the entities, for manufacturing underground mining machinery and entities engaged in underground mining.

“With the proposed measures and policy initiatives, coking coal has the potential to emerge as one of the important new business areas for CIL and other private sector players. It will contribute in multiple ways to the economic development of the country,” says the Inter-Ministerial Committee.

“The vision for setting up Mission Coking Coal is to prepare an action plan to reduce import of coking coal … This will give the necessary boost to coking coal production in our country, and strengthen in-house capabilities which thereby will help in substantial reduction of coking coal imports and will lead us on a path to [Indian self-reliance programme] ‘AtmaNirbhar Bharat’,” the committee concludes.