BS People: Nirmal Chandra Jha

It was a dream come true for one of the best professionals in the country’s mining technology — who received the National Geo Science Award for excellence in the field in 2009 — to manage a coal company.

For his colleagues, it was more than that. According to them, Nirmal Chandra Jha deserved and was destined to spearhead the world’s largest coal mining company, Coal India Ltd (CIL). The present chairman (interim) was one of the architects of the rags-to-riches story of the PSU.

When he was CIL’s director (technical), Jha was instrumental in introducing many international mining-oriented initiatives in India. He is said to be the mastermind of CIL’s strategy to shift to washed coal gradually — something that will place it in line with international standards.

“It’s upon people to rate my contribution to the company. But the work that gave me a lot of satisfaction was during my tenure as the director (technical), when I tried to modernise the mining and technical aspects of CIL,” Jha says.

A member of the Coal Mining Task Force (CMTF) of the Asia Pacific Partnership on clean coal climate since April 2007, Jha’s target was to convert CIL as an eco-friendly company and was even the motivating force behind its afforestation initiatives.

Jha took the additional charge of the Kolkata-based company in March this year. For nine months until then, he had held the additional charge of chairman-cum-managing director of Bilaspur-based South Eastern Coalfields Ltd, CIL’s largest coal producing arm.

With a rich experience of over three-and-a-half decades in the coal industry, Jha yearns to do more for the sector.