The Public Enterprises Selection Board (PSEB) on Wednesday recommended Central Coalfields CMD Polavarapu Mallikharjuna Prasad as the next Chairman and Managing Director of Coal India (CIL).

Prasad is expected to take the charge of India’s largest coal miner accounting for almost 80 per cent of the mined commodity from July 1.

A mining engineer from Osmania university, Prasad took over as the CCL CMD on September 1, 2020, and has more than three decades of experience in the mining sector. He is credited for the diversion of Nallah at Hingula opencast area to unlock coal reserve of 26 million tonnes (MT) in FY15 and the commencement of a new railway siding at the Talcher Coalfields.

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Prasad also took over as the CMD of Bharat Coking Coal (BCCL) in August 2019. Both CCL and BCCL are subsidiaries of CIL.

Prasad will take over the baton from serving CMD Pramod Agrawal, whose term ends on June 30, 2023. Agrawal is a Madhya Pradesh cadre IAS officer, who took over the charge of CMD of the mining behemoth from Anil Kumar Jha in January 2020. He is the third officer from the Indian Administrative Service to hold the top post at CIL.

The Maharatna company employs around 2,48,550 people and operates through 84 mining areas spread over eight states. The mining giant has 318 mines (as on April 1, 2022) of which 141 are underground, 158 opencast and 19 mixed mines. CIL also has ten subsidiary companies.

In FY23, India’s coal production surpassed 892 million tonnes during FY23, registering 14.7 per cent Y-o-Y growth. Of this. CIL accounted for 78.8 per cent of the total production. Its production grew by 12.9 per cent Y-o-Y to 703.2 mt during this period.

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