{"id":104825,"date":"2026-05-24T10:48:27","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T05:18:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=104825"},"modified":"2026-05-24T13:29:33","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T07:59:33","slug":"jharia-coalfield","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/jharia-coalfield\/","title":{"rendered":"Jharia Coalfield"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Jharia Coalfield Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A new study has found that the long-burning underground fires in the Jharia Coalfield may be burning hotter and emitting more greenhouse gases than previously estimated. <\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Jharia Coalfield<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is located in the Dhanbad district of <\/span><b>Jharkhand<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It lies in the <\/span><b>Damodar River valley<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and covers about 280 sq.km.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is known for its <\/span><b>vast deposits of high-quality <a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/coking-coal-production-in-india\/\" target=\"_blank\">coking coal <\/a><\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and holds the <\/span><b>largest coal reserves in the country,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> having estimated reserves of 19.4 billion tonnes.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Coal mining began<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in Jharia in <\/span><b>1894<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and there are now <\/span><b>more than 20 underground mines<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and several<\/span><b> large open-cast coal mines <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">there.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Underground fires <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">were <\/span><b>first noted <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in Jharia in <\/span><b>1916<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and they have <\/span><b>continued to spread, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">destroying properties and killing miners.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><b>What is Coking Coal?<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Coking coal (or <\/span><b>metallurgical coal<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">) is a<\/span><b> naturally occurring sedimentary rock <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">found within the earth\u2019s crust.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It typically <\/span><b>contains more carbon, less ash, and less moisture than thermal coal,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> which is used for electricity generation.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is a<\/span><b> bituminous coal <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">with a suitable quality that allows the <\/span><b>production of metallurgical coke, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">or simply named<\/span><b> coke.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Coke <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is the main product of the<\/span><b> high-temperature carbonisation of coking coal.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It is an <\/span><b>essential input material in steelmaking,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> as it is used to produce pig iron in blast furnaces, acting as the reducing agent of iron ore and as the support of the furnace charge.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Major Producers:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The largest producers of coking coal were <\/span><b>China, Australia, Russia, USA, and Canada.<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>India <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">has an estimated 37.37 billion tonnes of <\/span><b>coking coal resources, largely located in Jharkhand,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> with additional reserves in <\/span><b>Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, and Chhattisgarh.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Source<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: <\/span><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/epaper.thehindu.com\/ccidist-ws\/th\/th_delhi\/issues\/186144\/OPS\/GA0G15U8O.1+G0DG17KJ9.1.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">TH<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jharia Coalfield in Jharkhand holds India\u2019s largest coking coal reserves but faces decades-old underground fires causing deaths and damage. Read more about Jharia Coalfield, Location, Latest News  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":104846,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7698,21,22,23],"class_list":{"0":"post-104825","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"tag-jharia-coalfield","9":"tag-prelims-pointers","10":"tag-upsc-current-affairs","11":"tag-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","12":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104825"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104859,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104825\/revisions\/104859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}