SECL is powering India’s energy security today while advancing responsible mining, greener operations and a sustainable path towards Net Zero
NEW DELHI: Every ambition India has declared for itself resonates with a five-trillion-dollar economy, universal electrification, manufacturing at global scale, 24×7 power to the last village, and electricity that arrives reliably, affordably and at the moment it is demanded.
In FY 2025-26, Indian domestic coal production crossed the one-billion-tonne mark for the second consecutive year, reaching a provisional 1.04 billion tonnes, and coal continued to power roughly 73 per cent of the nation’s electricity generation.
Behind that national figure stands a set of institutions that were reformed, resourced and pushed to perform after 2014. Among the most consequential is South Eastern Coalfields Limited (SECL), the Mini Ratna subsidiary of Coal India Limited operating across Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.
In FY 2025-26, it produced 176.28 million tonnes of coal, with approximately 23 per cent of Coal India’s output and around 17 per cent of everything India mined. The trajectory is the story. SECL produced 34.2 MT in its founding year of 1985-86 and 124.26 MT in 2013-14. The jump since then has been driven not by digging more holes but by digging better.
Output per Man-Shift, the sector’s core efficiency measure, has more than doubled from 7.23 tonnes in 2013-14 to 16.47 tonnes in 2025-26. Offtake reached 178.63 MT across thirteen states, up more than 46 per cent from 122.03 MT a decade earlier.
At the operational heart sit Gevra, Kusmunda and Dipka in Korba, three mega mines with a combined 185 million tonne capacity, an energy concentration that has earned Korba its description as India’s powerhouse.
The transformation traces directly to policy. Since 2014, the Government of India has driven a sequence of structural reforms across the coal sector aimed at transparency, technology adoption, ease of operations and energy security.
Decision-making accelerated. Mine planning modernised. Evacuation infrastructure, long the sector’s weakest link, finally received capital commensurate with its importance. SECL is developing the Chhattisgarh East and Chhattisgarh East-West Railway corridors with IRCON and the Government of Chhattisgarh, roughly 342.6 kilometres of line at an investment of about Rs 13,685 crore, connecting the remotest reaches of the Mand-Raigarh and Korba coalfields to the national network. These are coal corridors that will also carry people and goods, converting extraction infrastructure into regional development infrastructure.
Eleven First Mile Connectivity projects, with combined annual capacity of 156 million tonnes, have been commissioned at an investment of about Rs 2,700 crore, with seven more planned to add 85 MTY of mechanised loading. FMC dispatch grew 28 per cent in FY 2025-26 and now accounts for 41.3 per cent of total dispatch. This matters twice over: it moves coal faster, and by replacing road movement and manual handling with mechanised, enclosed systems, it directly reduces the carbon footprint of evacuation.
Inside the mines, mechanisation has changed the physical nature of the work. More than 88 per cent of SECL’s coal is now produced using surface miners, which cut coal without conventional drilling and blasting by eliminating the vibration and dust that accompanied older methods. Continuous Miners now deliver 76 per cent of underground production.
At Singhali Underground Mine, paste fill technology fills mined-out voids with an engineered mixture, supporting underground stability and enabling extraction beneath surface areas that conventional methods cannot safely reach. Mine Developer and Operator arrangements and revenue-sharing agreements bring specialist capability into the company.
Overlaying all of it is DigiCOAL, integrating machinery monitoring, drone surveys, video analytics and worker-safety applications, supported by more than 1,600 CCTV cameras across mines, sidings and dispatch points, with AI-enabled surveillance analytics as the next step.
Its presentation at the Central Vigilance Commission’s national workshop in February 2026 underlined what digital systems deliver beyond efficiency: transparency and accountability, built into the process rather than audited after it.
India’s net-zero achievement has been set out by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Glasgow as the Panchamrit Yojna: 500 GW of non-fossil capacity and 50 per cent of installed capacity from non-fossil sources by 2030, carbon intensity down 45 per cent and net zero by 2070.
The Ministry of Coal has translated this into its own mandate with a net-zero electricity consumption plan for coal and lignite PSUs, with the sector targeting over 9 GW of renewable capacity by 2030, and Coal India committed to becoming a Net Zero Energy Company.
SECL’s contribution to that mandate runs on the same land, at the same time, as its coal operations. Installed solar capacity has reached 44 MW, against nil in 2014. Twenty MW of solar has been commissioned at Bhatgaon and Bishrampur; a 40 MW project is under implementation at Pinoura UG, 5 MW is being integrated with an eco-park at Vivek Nagar UG and 55 MW is planned across Jamuna UG and Govinda UG.
The elegance lies in where these panels sit. They occupy reclaimed mining land and ground that has already given its coal and would otherwise sit idle. The same acre powers India twice.
Coal India’s sustainability report for FY 2025-26 records renewable energy consumption more than doubling, with a 9.5 GW solar programme taking shape across its subsidiaries. The direction of travel is measurable rather than declaratory, with emissions reduction, energy efficiency, lower transport emissions, restored land and expanded carbon sequestration tracked as line items and SECL’s solar and reclamation figures feed straight into that national ledger.
SECL has completed the scientific closure of 28 abandoned mines as of August 2026, the highest among all Coal India subsidiaries and roughly 67 per cent of every scientifically closed abandoned coal mine in the country. Twenty-five of those were completed in FY 2025-26 alone. Of 54 mines identified, eleven are slated for FY 2026-27 and the remaining fifteen for FY 2027-28.
District Mine Closure Advisory Committees now operate across all ten of SECL’s districts in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, giving local communities a formal seat in deciding what the land becomes.
Eight repurposing projects are live. Kenapara Eco Park near Bishrampur in Surajpur district is complete, supporting tourism and community enterprise on reclaimed ground. At Banki 7&8 Underground Mine in Korba, the land now carries a health centre and a weekly market.
Reclaimed land at Korba 3&4 UG forms part of the Bal Vihar Higher Secondary School campus; North Jhagrakhand UG supports a public park and a water filter plant. The Atharvaveda’s Bhumi Sukta declares the earth to be mother and humanity her children. Scientific closure is that principle rendered as engineering: the land is sealed, treated, restored and returned to use.
Reused mine water irrigated more than 3,800 hectares. A highest-ever 14.36 lakh saplings were planted across 571 hectares in FY 2025-26, including dense Miyawaki plantations, against roughly five lakh in 2014, nearly a threefold increase in a single decade. SECL’s Green Transition Leadership Award 2026 recognises exactly this record.
Modernisation has widened who gets to participate. Project Dharashakti equips women employees with skills and pathways into technical and operational roles, including Heavy Earth Moving Machinery operation, with nineteen women trainees learning HEMM operation on advanced simulators.
SECL has established Coal India’s first all-women-operated dispensary at Vasant Vihar, Bilaspur, and its first all-women-operated Central Store Unit at the Central Workshop, Korba, as Nari Shakti moves into the operating core of heavy industry.
The financial base has grown with the capability. Net worth rose from about Rs 9,544 crore in March 2015 to Rs 20,457 crore in March 2026, a gain of nearly 114 per cent. In FY 2025-26, SECL contributed about Rs 11,830 crore to Central and State exchequers, with royalty alone climbing from Rs 2,075 crore in FY 2014-15 to Rs 3,485 crore, close to 70 per cent higher than the previous year.
That revenue returns to the coalfields. CSR spending grew from Rs 43.91 crore in FY 2013-14 to over Rs 127 crore in FY 2025-26, a rise of about 188 per cent, with roughly Rs 1,078 crore invested in mining-affected communities since 2014-15 and 5,405 land-linked employments provided.
SECL Ke Sushrut, offering free residential NEET coaching, saw 70 of its first 80 students qualify and enter MBBS and allied courses for the first CSR scheme of a coal PSU listed on the Government’s DBT Portal. SECL Ki Dhadkan has completed 300 free corrective heart surgeries for children, now approaching 1,060.
As Mand-Raigarh emerges alongside Korba as a second production base, SECL demonstrates that the proposition at the centre of India’s energy strategy- reliable base-load coal is precisely what allows renewables to scale. Antyodaya and Aatmanirbharat are not served by choosing between the two. They are served by balancing both, and India is now mastering both at scale.
