Another Coalgate scam in making at CIL Subsidary of NCL

Northern Coalfields Limited (NCL) ISO-14001 Certified Company. NCL is a subsidiary of Coal India. Its headquarters is in Singrauli in state of Madhya Pradesh. It was founded in 1984. Earlier it was a subsidiary of Central Coalfields Limited (CCL). It is a Mini Ratna Company & among the top public sector undertakings in India with highest profit making subsidiary of Coal India Limited.
Today everybody is upbeat at NCL as they are on the verge of achieving their production target of 70MT, but a closer look into the things smells a Rat & exposes a scam in making.
This increase in production is camouflaged with today’s most flourishing business of NCL being “Outsourced Overburden Removal” by mining contractors. This business is secretly flourishing in this remote part of the country in nexus with NCL top brasses.
Today Outsourcing at NCL is planned, tendered & finally awarded by the concerned departments of NCL by flouting many a norms
• Actual assessment of shortage of capacity is not being done as per CMPDIL norms.
• The Off take capacity is not in line with the augmented Coal production, hence resulting in huge inventory levels. A very well known fact that if dispatch of Coal does not happens within stipulated time, the thermal efficiency of the coal goes down thereby risking the chance of being rejected by Thermal power plants .
• There is a well crafted nexus between the top management of the company & powerful mining mafia where mining overburden removal contracts are awarded to increase the production , but there is no answers to the question surrounding Off take capacity .The board of NCL has being constantly being given wrong pictures emphasizing on meeting production targets & thereby justifying that Overburden outsourcing is absolutely necessary in the absence of departmental capacity or increased workforce.
• NCL has the highest fleet of Heavy Earth Moving Mining Machineries in India with an asset base of more than Rs 8000 Crore. It has a total workforce of 17000 people with more than 6000 executives & balance being workmen. Overburden removal has traditionally been done in NCL departmentally by using giant mining machineries like Walking Draglines, Rope Shovels of 10CuM & 20CuM , Dump trucks of 85 Ton , 100 Ton , 150 Ton & 170 ton respectively which are technically advanced mining machines which are worth millions of Dollars imported from countries of USA, Japan, Germany & Russia unlike private mining contractors who are using low cost On Road Construction trucks of 30Ton & excavators of just 3CuM & 4 CuM capacity which are actually construction machineries. So there is no comparison on the skill set, safety practices, quality of workforce between NCL & that of these mining contractors. These companies are so powerful that they lobbied against an attempt by previous NCL Chairman to make it mandatory for these companies to operate mining with a 10Cum excavator & 100Ton Dumper.
• The big daddy of audit in the country “CAG’’ in the past has already questioned NCL on capacity utilization of its mines, as well on availability & utilization of its large capacity HEMM.This is true fact as the departmental removal of Overburden of NCL is constantly depleting year on year, thereby idling the huge tract of workforce & HEMM’s.
• Another big thing grappling NCL is active influence of Middlemen’s in getting the Overburden outsourcing deal through, while the government is busy cracking the role of agents & middlemen in the multi crore defence procurement deals, NCL management in tandem with these middle men are awarding multi crore tenders of Overburden removal of Hiring of HEMM’s by manipulating production targets. The lobby is so powerful that they are directly interfering by delaying the procurement process of large capacity equipments of NCL, thus crippling the huge tract force of workforce of excavation department. Non Availability of departmental equipments paves way for these lobbyists to strike a deal with NCL management to award tenders for Overburden Outsourcing. All these are done at the behest of Govt. of India’s guidelines to increase coal production & thus these companies take the shield of increasing the production by awarding contracts of Overburden outsourcing, but the real fact is that there is a criminal conspiracy hatched by these people to cripple to company & industry.
• As per Govt. of India guidelines, a public sector company has to promote ancillary units, while a lot of players who manufacture spare parts of HEMM’s of NCL has been given ancillary status, none of them has been given the platform to develop & deliver quality product just because of high handedness & harassment by NCL officials. Concrete efforts were made to ensure that these companies supply sub standard products so that they may permanently be banned out of business.

• If sources are to be believed many a senior level executives of NCL are on the radar of CVC & CBI for hatching criminal & financial conspiracy against their company, On one hand the chairman of NCL is not being CVC/CBI clearance just on basis of a mere suspicion of his involvement in a procurement deal, a top level functional director of the company is being secretly continiouing the services for so many years despite pending vigilance clearance & CBI. How can there be parity in dealing with the officials of the same rank. These things are managed secretly with active lobbying at Coal India & ministerial circles. This is an open flouting of the norm & a slap on war against governments efforts to weed out corruption in the country. Many a senior managers & General Managers of this company are still continuing in many sensitive posts despite Vigilance advise to remove them from these posts.

• Please remember the concept of introducing PSU in India was for socio economic upliftment of the country, this is being misused now & directions are moving towards privatization of profitable PSU which is quite alarming. In developed European countries who had done privatization of their industry ages before us are now reversing their trend to nationalization during recession to protect the socio economic interest of their citizens. A classic example being French Governments warning to Arrcelor Mittal, a global steel major to take back industries privatized to them if they failed to protect the socio economic rights of the people working

A request with this article to CAG, CVC & CBI to crack this nexus & expose the reality.

Sack the culprits