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Output from captive coal mines rose from 167.44 MT in FY 2024-25 to 184 MT in FY 2025-26, a growth of 10.10 per cent.
With about 26 MT from commercial mines, the captive and commercial segment together produced 210 MT against 190.95 MT the previous year — around 21 per cent of domestic output.
India's total coal production stood at 1,039 MT in FY 2025-26, staying above one billion tonnes for a second successive year.
Captive mines produced 68.98 MT up to 10 September 2026 and dispatched 75.68 MT, growth of about 5 per cent and 5.94 per cent respectively.
Nine captive and commercial mines with a combined peak rated capacity of 20.67 MT are to begin production in FY 2026-27; three of them, totalling 7.51 MT, have already started.
A captive mine supplies coal only to its allottee's own end-use plant — power, steel, cement or aluminium. A commercial mine's operator may sell the coal to anyone in the open market. Commercial mining was opened to all Indian companies without end-use restriction in 2020.
Simple Analogy: A kitchen garden feeds one household; a market garden sells to whoever turns up.
Open coal mining to any Indian company without end-use restriction
Key: First commercial auction launched 18 June 2020; enabled by the Mineral Laws (Amendment) Act, 2020 (notified 13 March 2020), which amended the MMDR Act, 1957 and the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Act, 2015; blocks awarded on revenue share
Allocate coal linkages to power plants transparently
Key: Issued by the Ministry of Coal on 22 May 2017; shifted linkage allocation from nomination to auction and tariff-based bidding; a revised SHAKTI policy was approved by the Cabinet in 2025
Track coal price movement and set the revenue share payable from auctioned blocks
Key: Rolled out June 2020, base year FY 2017-18; five sub-indices — three non-coking, two coking; designed by the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata
Let an allottee without mining expertise still work its block
Key: The allottee contracts a specialist developer to explore, develop and operate the block and deliver the coal, while retaining the allocation; widely used by captive blocks
Apex holding company of the nationalised coal industry and the world's single largest coal producer; has eight subsidiaries
Works the Godavari valley coalfields; NOT a Coal India subsidiary
Exploration, mine planning and design consultancy for the coal sector
GS Paper 3 > Infrastructure > Energy and Mineral Resources
General Awareness > Indian Economy and Public Sector Undertakings
A coal mine whose output may be used only in the allottee's own end-use plant, not sold in the open market.
A coal price index with base year FY 2017-18, rolled out in June 2020, used to compute revenue share per tonne from auctioned blocks.
Scheme for Harnessing and Allocating Koyala (Coal) Transparently in India, 2017 — the auction-based route for allocating coal linkages to power plants.