Cracking the whip on power, steel and cement firms, the government has issued show cause notices to 25 companies who have been allotted coal blocks for captive use but are yet to start mining.
"Show cause notices have been issued to 25 captive coal block allottees for not starting the development and mining work at the allocated reserves. It is in line with the process we have adopted to weed out non-serious firms," Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal said today.
The list is learnt to be containing names of public and private companies who have been allocated captive blocks in the last 5-7 years.
"Whoever is the defaulter, either government or private company, will be punished," Jaiswal added.
Last month, the ministry held a meeting with private and public sector companies including NTPC, SAIL, NMDC and reviewed the progress of work on the captive coal blocks allotted to them.
Earlier this year, the coal ministry had served show cause notices on 14 captive coal allottees including Tata Sponge, NCT Delhi, Monnet Ispat, Adhunik Group.
The coal ministry has so far allotted 196 captive coal blocks with a cumulative reserve of 51 billion tonnes. The blocks are exclusively meant to cater to the captive coal requirements of the allottees.
