KOLKATA: Eastern Coalfields Ltd (ECL), a subsidiary of Coal India, is focusing on expanding its underground mining operations to achieve more than double production from such activity at 20 million tonne by 2028, a senior official said on Sunday.

This has been planned to support Coal India’s target to ramp up underground coal production from all mining subsidiaries to 100 million tonne by 2030 from a level of 25-26 mn tonne now, he said. ECL underground coal commands a premium of three to four times over average notified prices, and now, it accounts for 25 per cent of its total production, while the rest is from open cast operation, ECL director (technical), Niladri Roy said.