Coal India Ltd (CIL) has said that the compensation cum rehabilitation package for Jharkhand government, worked out by its subsidiary Central Mine Planning and Design Institute, would come to around Rs 7,800 crore.
The package, till date one of the biggest offered for rehabilitation and compensation by any public sector company and hanging fire since 1999, would be implemented over the next 10 years.
According to CIL chairman and managing director NC Jha, said the project has been approved by the government and the fund is available for the programme.
He said the Jharia Rehabilitation and Development Authority (JRDA), in charge of relocating thousands of families who will have to vacate their homes on the mining town's fire zone, was now constructing houses.
Under the plan, the JRDA was to oversee relocation of Jharia township which has been sitting on an underground mine fire raging for nearly a century. As many as 112,000 families, whose homes are in the danger zone facing subsidence, would have to be relocated.
Jha said the company has 1.5 million tonne of coking coal stock, for which there is no taker. “We don’t know what to do with the resources and now we have decided to auction it,” he said.
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According to reports, the package was revised twice in 2003 and 2006 and was confronted with a public interest litigation before the Supreme Court with the director general of mines safety (DGMS) playing an active role for its passage that about 5 townships would be built with the money to rehabilitate around 400,000 people.
The townships will be set up on the north side of Jharia coalfields away from fire and subsidence assault. As per the package, BCCL would also be doing the fire fighting job, which has been raging in the mines for the last 90 years while the rehabilitation work would primarily be carried out by the JRDA.