After a prolonged wait of 3 years, the Centre has finally allotted the Deocha-Pachami coal field to West Bengal Power Development Corporation Ltd which will create more than one lakh jobs and solve the State’s employment, coal and power woes for more than 100 years, Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said.

Apart from addressing Bengal’s coal requirements the second largest coal block of the world with an estimated reserve of about 2.1 billion tones would go a distance in taking good care of the entire country’s coal and power needs, Banerjee said adding it would take at least five years for the infrastructure project to take off.

By the time extraction of coal begins the project would involve an investment of Rs 12,000 crore and would spread over an area of 1,100 acres, Banerjee said reminding Deocha Pachami had a potential of becoming India’s biggest industrial project that could in the final run bring back many an industrial houses that had left the State.

“Had the clearance been given earlier the project would have started long ago,” the Chief Minister said adding a committee led by the Chief Secretary would be set up to look into the various issues related with infrastructure building and extraction of coal.

“We will not eject people out of the area,” Banerjee said adding there were “some 400 families living in the area out of which about 40 per cent are tribal people. We will take them into confidence and provide them adequate rehabilitation before beginning the work,” the Chief Minister who herself came to power following prolonged farmers’ movement against forcible eviction said.