Four persons, including a coal miner and two officials of the State-owned Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) besides an outsourced worker, were trapped inside the Adriyala Longwall Project (ALP), India’s largest mechanised underground coal mine, in Ramagiri mandal of Telangana’s Peddapalli district, when a portion of the roof of the mine collapsed on Monday afternoon.
Two other coal miners, who were stuck under the rubble inside the coal mine, were rescued by the SCCL’s rescue team personnel later in the day, SCCL sources said.
The incident occurred at hundreds of metres below the surface in the mechanised underground mine, located about 225 km from the State capital Hyderabad, on Monday afternoon.
Sources said that the rescuers after strenuous efforts rescued Pelli Naresh, mining sardar and Venkatesham, SDL operator, from the mishap site late in the evening.
However, four more personnel including Jayaraj, Area Safety Officer, Teja, Deputy Manager, Srikanth, Badli worker, and an outsourced worker were still trapped under the debris inside the mine, when reports last came in.
The two rescued coal miners were admitted to the Singareni area hospital in Godavarikhani.
The SCCL’s flagship ALP project has a rated capacity of 2.8 million tonnes per annum.
The SCCL management has laid a special focus on the ALP and the continuous miners at the GDK 11 incline in Ramagundam region and optimum utilisation of the heavy machinery elsewhere in the coal belt region to meet the stipulated annual coal production target of 68 million tonnes in the current fiscal (2021-2022), sources said.
The mishap comes amid concerns expressed by various trade unions over the series of mishaps in the SCCL’s coal mines in the past one year that claimed around 10 lives.
In November last year, four coal miners were killed in a roof collapse incident in the SRP 3 & 3A incline underground mine in Mancherial district.
Meanwhile, the rescue operation continued at the ALP under the supervision of the SCCL’s Mines Rescue Station Superintendent Madhava Rao and the Godavarikhani Assistant Commissioner of Police Giri Prasad.
One of the trapped coal miners sounded an alarm from the mishap site which facilitated the rescue effort eventually saving his life, said a member of the rescue team, when contacted by The Hindu over phone.
“We are making every effort to reach out to the remaining trapped personnel and rescue them,” he asserted.
