Central Coalfields Limited Fuels Coal, Not Sustainability

Central Coalfields Limited should explain how its slogan “Fueling Sustainable Growth” survives contact with its own coal expansion record, as reported by Devdiscourse. The company, a Coal India subsidiary, operates the Magadh opencast coal mine in Jharkhand’s Chatra and Latehar districts, where the Environment Ministry’s Expert Appraisal Committee has cleared expansion from 20 to 24 million tonnes annually. The project involves 628.09 hectares of forest land, while 352.05 hectares still lacks final Stage-II forest clearance.

Add 11 pending court cases over alleged forest encroachment, and the slogan stops sounding clever. It starts sounding obscene.

Central Coalfields Limited is not “fueling sustainable growth” when forest land becomes the price of expansion. Whose growth is being fuelled here? Coal output, corporate extraction, railway sidings, and balance sheets. Not forests. Not wildlife. Not corridors. Not communities forced to live beside dust, blasting and degraded land. The mining lease area may have been reduced from 1,769 hectares to 1,598.71 hectares, but that does not clean the central fact: hundreds of hectares of forest remain tied to a coal project already surrounded by unresolved legal allegations.

Central Coalfields Limited Cannot Greenwash Forest Loss

The EAC noted that court cases linked to alleged forest encroachment exist, but accepted that the forest land involved falls outside the approved mining lease area. That is exactly the kind of bureaucratic phrasing that lets extraction keep walking forward while accountability limps behind. If forest land was allegedly cleared around railway lines, mining-related infrastructure or project-linked activity, pretending it is somehow morally separate from the coal operation is administrative theatre. Forest damage does not become less real because a map line helps officials approve expansion.

Central Coalfields Limited told the committee that alleged violations were linked to discrepancies between old cadastral surveys and newer revisional survey records. It also claimed that non-diverted forest parcels were not visually different from non-forest land, so allied activities “inadvertently” extended into those areas. That excuse should insult anyone who still believes large mining companies should know where they are operating. A company big enough to expand a 24-million-tonne coal mine should be big enough to identify forest land before entering it.

Eleven Cases Demand Independent Investigation

The 11 pending cases were filed between 2019 and 2025 under forest laws. Allegations include clearing around 10 hectares of forest land near the Magadh coal block siding, clearing about 25 hectares in Chatra’s Kundi village, and using forest land for mining-related activity. The EAC recommended bamboo pillars or fencing to prevent activities inside forest land and said no mining should occur in the 352.05 hectares without final clearance. Bamboo pillars after alleged encroachment are not justice. They are decoration around a governance failure.

Central Coalfields Limited should not receive the benefit of expansion while questions of alleged forest violation remain unresolved. The correct response should have been suspension, independent investigation, public disclosure of maps, satellite review, liability assessment and accountability for every official who failed to protect forest boundaries. Legal experts have already warned that such clearances encourage companies to create a fait accompli and seek permission later. That is not environmental governance. That is a reward system for pushing first and explaining later.

Coal mining in forest landscapes is never just an industrial footprint. It brings roads, rail movement, dust, blasting, settlements, edge pressure, water stress and habitat fragmentation. For tiger landscapes, that means weakened corridors, disturbed prey, greater human pressure and slow ecological collapse. The phrase “Fueling Sustainable Growth” becomes grotesque when the fuel is coal and the growth consumes forest land. Sustainability cannot be printed on a company slogan while the ground tells a darker story.

This is why Central Coalfields Limited belongs in the larger crisis of mining-driven destruction, where wealth is extracted and extinction risk is left behind. The EAC approval reeks of institutional capture and must face an independent investigation. Until every court case, clearance gap and alleged encroachment is resolved transparently, Central Coalfields Limitedshould stop hiding behind green language. It is not fueling sustainable growth. It is fueling coal expansion through contested forest land.