Study on the Trend of Accidents due to explosives in Indian Mining Industry and the Future Challenges

The cases of accidents in indian coal and non-coal mines during 2001-2009 were studied and analysed from the various available annual reports and standard notes. The study reveals that there is an overall decrease in number of accidents due to usage of explosives in the mines. The number of accidents due to use of explosive in indian mines was 15 in 2001 which has been reduced to 8 in 2009. Based on analysis of the trend lines plotted for fatal and serious accidents during the period it is clear that these declining trends are insignificant and not encouraging. The slope of the trend line for decrease in fatal accidents in non-coal mines is 8.280 whereas for coal mines, it is 6.200 only. The various challenges for future and need of the hour to mitigate the accidents due to explosives usage in mine s have been discussed and presented in this paper