Eastern Coalfields Limited (ECL) has set up e-waste collection kiosks across its premises under the Government of India's Special Campaign 6.

The deployment puts permanent electronics-waste intake points inside a Coal India subsidiary whose core business is coal mining, expanding the central PSU's footprint beyond extraction into reverse-logistics infrastructure for discarded consumer devices. The kiosks will route used electronic items to authorised dismantlers and recyclers rather than municipal solid-waste streams.

What does Special Campaign 6 cover?

The Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) runs Special Campaign 6.0 as the latest iteration in a recurring exercise. Each cycle tasks Union ministries, attached departments, autonomous bodies and central public sector enterprises with a defined set of activities during a fixed window:

• Clearing pending references
• Weeding obsolete files
• Freeing office space
• Running swachhata drives

E-waste collection sits inside the broader category of campaign-aligned environmental and waste-management actions.

The campaign also grades participation publicly. Ministries and CPSUs post outcome figures to a central dashboard, with year-on-year performance tables used to compare throughput across departments.

Why does a coal PSU need e-waste kiosks?

Central public sector undertakings (CPSUs) employ large workforces running internal offices, computer rooms and operational control centres. Routine replacement of desktops, laptops, printers, network gear, mobile devices and accessories generates a steady stream of end-of-life electronics — items that fall under India's E-Waste Management Rules once they reach end of life.

Coal India subsidiaries collectively run mining, washery, township and administrative sites that produce recurring streams of redundant IT assets, obsolete control-room instrumentation and expired radio gear. Much of this equipment contains printed circuit boards, lithium cells and cabling covered by India's e-waste schedule.

Channeled disposal through authorised recyclers keeps this material out of mixed municipal waste and gives the PSU auditable documentation for compliance. A drop-off kiosk also accepts personal devices from staff and, in some installations, from surrounding communities — turning the campaign action into a visible, time-bound civic event rather than a back-office record.

What does this signal for CPSU waste streams?

Adding e-waste kiosks to the Special Campaign 6 portfolio signals that participants are reading the campaign's swachhata envelope broadly enough to include hazardous and value-bearing waste streams, not just paper or obsolete records. The kiosk format — a fixed drop-off point on the premises — fits the campaign's emphasis on measurable, visible action within the cycle's reporting window.

For a coal-mining subsidiary, the move also points to the wider internal-diversification pattern visible across the Coal India group, where operational sites increasingly host circular-economy pilots. E-waste sits lower on the value chain than fly-ash monetisation but offers the same compliance-and-reporting hook that Special Campaign drives reward.

What decides what happens next?

The Special Campaign cycle carries a defined reporting requirement. Participating ministries and CPSUs log their campaign outcomes on the DARPG portal before the window closes, covering:

• Files disposed
• Space freed
• References cleared
• Special activities undertaken

The next milestone to watch is ECL's Special Campaign 6.0 outcome report, due on the DARPG portal at the close of the campaign window. It will indicate how many kiosks were commissioned, the volume of e-waste collected during the cycle, and whether the deployment continues into the next operational year.

The DARPG portal publishes the figures, which means ECL's headline tonnage — once filed — becomes the benchmark other Coal India subsidiaries are measured against in the next cycle. Until those numbers land, the kiosk deployment reads as a pilot-scale entry of CPSUs into formal e-waste collection under a flagship central-government drive. It also marks how broadly participants are willing to interpret the campaign's waste-management remit.