India: The Ministry of Coal has cancelled Jaypee Cement’s coal block at Mandla in Madhya Pradesh citing breach of agreement. In a letter the ministry said that the cement producer was ‘not serious about the development of the coal mine,’ according to the Business Standard newspaper. The ministry has accused Jaypee Cement of switching the plant using coal from the mine without permission and of exceeding the agreed output.
The Mandla coal mine was allocated to Jaypee Cement in March 2015 after a bidding process. At first it supplied Jaypee’s Balaji cement plant in Andhra Pradesh. However, production from the mine switched to the Shahabad cement plant in June 2017 following the acquisition of the Balaji plant by UltraTech Cement.