The committee, headed by a former chief of the Central Mine Planning & Design Institute (CMPDI), is yet to submit its report because it has to incorporate some objections raised by the director general of mines safety (DGMS).

The report terms the French equipment used for the high-seam longwall face at the Eastern Coalfields Ltd mine as `not adequate', which has some of the best coal reserves in Asia. Apart from the three deaths, one French expert lost a hand when 60 metres of the 150-metre face collapsed.

The Kottadih long-wall face construction contract was awarded to CdeF on a turnkey basis at a cost of over Rs 100 crore. The total value, including components and equipment, was over Rs 350 crore.

The Kottadih colliery reported a profitable production of one million tonnes during the first year of mechanised operation using high-seam long-wall mining. The initial success had been very encouraging for mine operators, who had been sceptical about the profitability of long-wall mining in India.Long-wall mining involves a high degree of mechanisation. But it also gives high recoveries as entire chunks of coal can be removed by using mechanical supports instead of the pillars of coal that have to be left behind in traditional underground mining.

A CIL source said that, at Kottadih, a high-seam longwall face in the third panel collapsed because of strata control problems and further operation in that panel has been stopped. Some of the equipment had to be sacrificed.The source said CIL has filed for compensation from the French company for the collapse and damage to equipment. CIL has moved the International Court of Arbitration at Zurich.

Kottadih was the first long-wall project in which the entire planning, implementation and operations was handed over to a foreign company, with CIL responsible only for providing man-months and occasional safety inspections.The Mahendru committee report is not unanimous because some members have submitted dissent notes. One of the dissenting members is the DGMS, who has raised objections against the language in the report on the role of the DGMS regarding safety matters.

Source said the report will be submitted to the government after suitable modifications.

According to the agreement, CDeF was to produce 1.38 million tonnes annually from the 5.3-metre high long-wall seam. However, it brought in a shearer (the equipment to cut the coal face) with a diameter of only 4.1 metres and not 5.3 metres as required.

With additional inputs by Arpan Mukherjee