THE plans for India's industrial expansion envisage
manifold increase in all branches of engineering indus-tries with a concomrnittant increase in the production and consumption of all quality of coals.
Although India has fairly large reserves of inferior
grades of coals, her resources of coking coals, including
the washable reserves, are by no means plentiful. To meet the demand of increasing production of steel for the succ- essive Five Year plans, the consumption of coking coal will he stepped up inauy tines. This will result in even a quicker rate of depletion of the dwindling reserves of cobing Coals. There can, therefore, be no difference of opinion about the need for restricting the use of metall-urgical coals for coking purpose alone and for the adop-tion of suitable means for the beneficiation of the high ash coals.
The installation of the coal washing plants, both in the private as well as public sectors, and the projects of erecting more washeries are concrete steps towards this objective, but much still remains to be done, and it has to be admitted that the magnitude of the problem has not yet been fully realised
