The coal ministry’s ambitious Rs 8,000-crore Jharia Action Plan may finally bear fruit with the Union Cabinet likely to take it up for discussion tomorrow.

The plan seeks to rehabilitate nearly 5,00,000 people from the endangered Jharia area in Jharkhand. This would help secure the prized 13 billion tonnes of coal (including 1,464 million tonnes of coking coal) estimated to be lying beneath the mines of Coal India Limited’s subsidiaries — Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL) and Eastern Coalfields Limited (ECL). While the state government had sanctioned the plan last year, besides the coal ministry recently approving it, the issue has now been placed before the Union Cabinet for its consideration.

“This would be the single biggest rehabilitation programme in any part of the world, where nearly 5,00,000 people would be rehabilitated with proper housing facilities,” Coal India Limited chairman Partha S Bhattacharyya told The Indian Express over telephone from Kolkata. The company would construct houses for the 78,000 families that would be rehabilitated to ‘safe areas’, intended to accommodate all those living within the endangered zones, he said.

Besides BCCL employees, the plan seeks to relocate those engaged in industries, shops and establishments located on the endangered land. As some areas of Raniganj in West Bengal would also come under the plan, evacuation would need to be carried out there as well. There have been reports of sporadic opposition in the Jharia area, but Bhattacharrya exuded confidence that it could be tackled.