The Centre has made it clear that it was against divestment of its 49 per cent stake in the State-owned joint venture Singareni Collieries Company Ltd.

According to Piyush Goyal, Union Minister for Coal and Power, the Centre had examined a proposal sent by the Telangana Government to buy out the Centre’s stake in the joint venture. The State owns 51 per cent of the company.

In July 2014, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao had written to the Centre expressing interest to acquire the Centre’s stake as the State was keen to further strengthen Singareni and consider acquisition of coal mines in India and abroad.

Responding to a query of Telangana Rashtra Samithi member A Sitharam Naik in Parliament, the Union Minister said after examining the State proposal, the Centre felt this was an unacceptable proposition.

The Minister made it clear that coal is a national asset and has to be used in an equitable manner for the country, including for use by non-coal bearing States. Therefore, in the national interest it would not be appropriate to divest the Government’s stake, he explained.

The Centre has appointed Peeyush Kumar, Director (Technical) Ministry of Coal, and Jagadish Kumar, Deputy Secretary, Ministry of Coal in place of AK Bhalla and DN Prasad on the Board of Singareni.

The Board of Directors meeting chaired by N Sridhar, CMD, took a number of decisions towards welfare of employees including move to implement Prime Minister Suraksha Bhima scheme for all employees from June 2015.

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