Sixty-six general managers, one Sunday. That was the format Telangana's deputy chief minister, Bhatti Vikramarka, chose to deliver a message to the Singareni Collieries Company: coal alone is no longer a plan.
According to a report in The Hindu BusinessLine published on 26 October 2026, the meeting in Hyderabad — described by the outlet as a first-of-its-kind gathering called by the state government — ended with a directive to SCCL to expand into critical minerals, naming copper, gold, vanadium and lithium, and to bring down the cost of producing coal.
Both halves of that instruction come from the same reading of the market. The minister pointed to the growing adoption of solar power, battery storage and pumped storage projects, and said Singareni must assess what that means for its thermal power generation and for future coal demand. Diversifying beyond coal mining was framed as the response.
Why cost is the other half
The cost push was not presented as housekeeping. The minister argued that buyers will go to whoever sells coal more cheaply, that losing competitiveness would eventually put the company's future at risk, and that the livelihoods of its workforce ride on it. Singareni supports around 42,000 permanent employees and another 34,000 to 36,000 contract and outsourced workers — the number that makes the company's viability a state government concern rather than merely a corporate one.
That is worth sitting with. For a coal incumbent facing storage-driven demand erosion, the first test is usually not whether it can mine lithium; it is whether it can still sell coal at a price the grid will pay while it works out what else it is. The directive keeps both in the same sentence.
The checks between a directive and a mine
Nothing has been approved. On the minerals side, the minister suggested engaging international consultants and running detailed feasibility studies before money is committed, drawing on Singareni's more than a century of mining experience. That is a gate, not a green light: consultancy appointments and study scopes are where a four-commodity ambition gets cut down to something a balance sheet can carry. Copper, gold, vanadium and lithium are not variations on a theme; each brings its own geology, processing chain and buyer. The report does not say which would be examined first, how the studies would be paid for, or when they would report.
On coal, the asks run to the Union government. The state is examining options to develop new mines, and has taken up with the Union Coal Ministry the question of letting Singareni use coal blocks previously allocated to it rather than sending them back into the auction process. That is a live request to another government, not a decision.
The minister also called for a review of coal supply agreements with power projects, of reserve availability and of production capacity. He argued coal allocations should be secured at the point power projects are planned — a way of saying supply and demand are matched too late — and noted a plain physical limit: Singareni can supply only the grades its mines actually produce. Grade mismatch is the kind of constraint that does not appear in a diversification announcement but does appear in a power plant's coal yard.
SCCL chairman and managing director Buddha Prakash Jyoti said the company was working to emerge as one of the country's leading mining companies.
What the directive leaves open
Quite a lot, and the report is candid about what it does not contain: no tonnage targets, no investment figure, no timeline, no scope for the feasibility work. Those absences matter more than they might seem, because the difference between a mining company that diversifies and one that merely announces it is almost entirely made of such details.
Three things to watch. First, whether consultant mandates or feasibility studies show up in SCCL's own disclosures — that would move the minerals plan from a meeting room into a budget line. Second, whether the coal-block request to the Union Coal Ministry moves, since Singareni's near-term cash still comes from coal and its ability to fund anything else depends on it. Third, whether coal supply agreements with power projects get renegotiated around grade and price — the unglamorous work that determines how long a runway the roughly 76,000–78,000 people whose livelihoods depend on this company actually get.
The temptation is to read this as a coal belt renouncing coal. It isn't that. It is a state owner telling a century-old miner, in front of its own general managers, that the demand curve it was built on is bending, that the first response is to get cheaper, and that any new mineral business has to survive a feasibility study before it gets a rupee.