New Delhi, 13 August

The Centre has given in-principle approval for diversion of 109.459 hectares of protected forest land in West Bengal's Durgapur Forest Division for the Gourangdih ABC Coal Mine, a project which involves the rehabilitation of 629 families, according to official records.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the Advisory Committee of the Union Environment Ministry on 30 July.

Operated by the West Bengal Mineral Development and Trading Corporation Ltd (WBMDTCL), the Gourangdih ABC Coal Mine spans 356.575 hectares, of which 109.459 hectares are forest land.

The area has a canopy density of 0.4, i.e., about 40 per cent of the land is shaded by leaves and branches of plants. The forest land also has about 5,200 trees, mostly Akashmoni, with wildlife such as Indian jackal, Bengal fox, porcupine, rock python, spectacled cobra and Russell's viper. It does not fall within any national park, wildlife sanctuary, eco-sensitive zone, tiger reserve or elephant corridor.

The committee stipulated that all compensatory afforestation (CA) patches below 10 hectares must be fenced with chain-link and maintained for 20 years, with tall seedlings of at least 18 months to be planted.

It said that the approved wildlife conservation plan for the area must be implemented at the user agency's cost and a soil and moisture conservation plan prepared to address erosion risks.

The project involves the rehabilitation of 629 families from non-forest land within the lease area, for which WBMDTCL will prepare a resettlement plan as per state guidelines.

The proposal was first submitted in 2019 and underwent several rounds of scrutiny, revisions and field visits.

The state government informed that no non-forest land is available nearby for overburden dumping, making the use of non-mineralised forest land unavoidable for that purpose. Overburden dumping is a process of disposing of the waste, such as rock and soil, among others, generated during the mining of ores.

The mine lease area lies in a coal-bearing belt with operational and abandoned mines. The committee recommended efforts to minimise tree felling and to consider conveyor-based coal evacuation to reduce road pollution, though the state has found such a system financially unviable.