India is seeking to revive underground coal mining as it tries to boost production to meet the country’s fast-growing energy needs despite international pressure to phase down use of the polluting fossil fuel.“India is on a high-orbit growth trajectory, expanding industrially and economically,” Amrit Lal Meena, a senior official at India’s coal ministry, said in a statement to the Financial Times. “Coal continues to play a key role in India’s economic growth and development.”

The ministry has outlined plans to triple output from underground coal mines by 2028, preparing to auction new blocks, accelerate environmental clearance and roll out incentives to promote foreign investment and domestic equipment manufacturing.

India, the world’s second-largest coal producer after China, currently extracts 95 per cent of its coal from opencast mines carved into the surface, and relies on the fuel for about three-quarters of its power production.