Aparnna Pradhan 
Coal India Limited (CIL), the world’s largest coal miner, is gearing up for one of its most significant strategic overhauls in recent memory. At the helm is Chairman-cum-Managing Director B. Sairam a seasoned mining engineer with over three decades of experience who has laid out an ambitious roadmap touching production, supply, technology, and diversification.
When asked about his top priorities, Sairam is direct: supply, production, and large-scale reforms and consolidation. The order matters. For a company historically obsessed with how much coal comes out of the ground, placing supply at the top signals a fundamental shift Coal India is now thinking like a market-driven enterprise, not just a mining machine.
Clearing the Stockpile One of CIL’s most pressing challenges is a mountain of unsold coal sitting at pithead locations inventories that once touched 130 million tonnes (MT). Sairam wants to bring this down to around 50 MT by moving towards a “produce and sell” model rather than stockpiling first and selling later. For FY27, CIL has set a production target of 815 MT and a higher supply target of 850 MT, meaning it plans to dispatch more than it mines chipping away at the surplus. Performance will no longer be measured by production alone, but by actual dispatches to consumers.
A ₹1 Trillion Infrastructure Bet To support this supply push, CIL is committing around ₹1 trillion in capital expenditure over five years through FY31, up sharply from ₹16,500 crore spent last year. A large portion targets First Mile Connectivity (FMC) conveyor systems, silos, and mechanised rail-loading facilities to move coal faster and reduce dependence on road transport. By FY30, CIL aims to scale FMC capacity to nearly 995 MT across 94 projects, compared to 432 MT today.
Gasification and Thermal Power CIL’s diversification ambitions are equally striking. The company is developing a ₹25,000 crore coal gasification project at Lakhanpur in Odisha, in partnership with BHEL, with capacity to produce 660,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate annually. Two more gasification projects are being evaluated in Asansol and Chandrapur. Additionally, CIL and Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) are jointly building a 1,600 MW ultra-supercritical thermal power plant at Chandrapura, expected by FY31. To fund these ventures, CIL is preparing to approach debt markets for the first time in its history, under a 70:30 debt-equity structure.
Year of Reforms Sairam has declared FY27 Coal India’s “Year of Reforms,” with 60 identified measures across exploration, marketing, HR, and infrastructure. The company is deploying AI and machine learning in exploration, digitising operations, and introducing HR upgrades including faster promotions and an employee wellness policy. Two more subsidiaries South Eastern Coalfields Ltd and Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd are also planned for stock market listing this year.
Coal India’s transformation under Sairam is not a tweak it’s a full-scale reset, and FY27 may well be remembered as the year it truly began.
