Singareni says it will wait for an ASI report before mining near Ramappa

Singareni Collieries said on Monday that it would not take a decision on a proposed opencast coal project in Mulugu district until the Archaeological Survey of India and other recognised bodies had reported, after conservationists warned that the mine could harm the Ramappa temple and the lake beside it.

The company, a Telangana government enterprise, called reports of a threat to the temple inaccurate. It said any decision on the Venkatapur opencast project would follow a scientific assessment. The statement came after the Kakatiya Heritage Trust asked the company to withdraw the proposed PVNR opencast project, arguing that it could damage the Kakatiya Rudreshwara Temple, known as Ramappa, and Ramappa Lake over the long term.

A delegation from the trust met Coal and Mines Minister G. Kishan Reddy in Hyderabad on Saturday and asked him to intervene. SCCL's Monday reply was that it would wait for the ASI and for other institutions before going further. It described itself as a responsible public-sector company and said it would not endanger a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It also said environmentally responsible and legally compliant mining was among its priorities.

Ramappa, in Mulugu, was inscribed by UNESCO for the Kakatiya temple's carved brackets, its floating bricks and its sandstone sculpture. The lake sits next to the complex. An opencast mine does not have to touch the temple wall to affect it. Blasting, a falling water table and dust are the three paths conservationists usually cite, and the trust's objection is aimed at those paths rather than at a plan to dig under the sanctum. SCCL has not published the distance from the proposed pit to the temple, or the depth of the cut. Without those two numbers the argument on both sides is incomplete.

The company's promise is procedural. It will wait for an ASI report and for other scientific reports. That is not a withdrawal. The trust asked for the project to be dropped. The company answered that it would not decide until the assessments were in. A mine that is paused for a report can be cleared by the same report. The trust's meeting with Kishan Reddy was an attempt to move the decision out of the company and into the ministry that owns the coal policy. Reddy has not published a reply.

UNESCO inscription does not by itself ban mining in a district. It does require the state party, in this case India, to protect the outstanding value that got the site listed. A report from the ASI is the domestic instrument for that duty. If the survey says the pit threatens the temple or the lake, SCCL's own statement from Monday leaves it little room to proceed. If the survey says the distance is sufficient, the trust will have to argue with a document rather than with a press note.

Mulugu is a coal district in the making as well as a heritage district. Singareni's existing mines are the company's reason for looking at Venkatapur at all. The Monday statement does not give a reserve figure, a start date or a production target. Those omissions matter. A project without a published output is easier to pause and easier to revive. The fact that can be tracked is whether an ASI team is actually tasked, and whether its terms of reference include the lake as well as the temple. The trust named both. A report that studies only the building would not answer the objection that was put to the minister on Saturday.