The West Bengal government and the Centre face a tough choice: a greenfield air port in Durgapur-Asansol belt or a coal reserve worth Rs 2,40,000 crore.

The greenfield airport in Burdwan’s Andal, the work for which was to start by the year-end, has now been deferred as the state government will have to enter a dialogue with the Coal India Limited (CIL), which has raised objections to the project.

“We will have to hold dialogues with the CIL. The deliberations will be based on the actual ground data about presence and extractability of underground coal, which the CIL claims, lies below the proposed greenfield airport,” said Sabyasachi Sen, secretary for Commerce and Industries, West Bengal.

He added that coal can be found below the Durgapur Steel Plant and IISCO, situated in the same area, but still the projects had come up.

“We will have to find out a solution that enables the project to come up but will not affect the coal reserve’s extractability,” Sen said.

The Ministry of Civil Aviation had already given the go-ahead for the airport and the process of acquiring of about 3500 acres was to begin shortly.

The CIL has raised the objection that if the project comes up, 2 billion tons of coal will become unextractable. It has submitted their objections to the civil aviation ministry on October 12.

The CIL, however, claimed that it had not, technically speaking, raised any objection.

“We have merely stated facts about how the coal reserves will be affected if the project were to come up. Now it is upto the state and Centre to decide whether they want coal or airport,” said Partha Bhattacharjee, chairman, CIL. “We have plans to use advanced machinery for the extraction of coal from the area.

... contd.