Coal India’s Digital Facade: Why Are Vendors Still Trapped in the Stone Age of Billing?

In today’s digital age, when even something as small as a cup of tea can be bought with a tap of a smartphone, Coal India Limited (CIL), the country’s coal titan, still appears to be stuck in the cave era of billing.

When most large PSUs are racing towards paperless financial systems, Coal India Limited (CIL) appears to be carrying a piece of the old bureaucratic culture into the digital age, for reasons perhaps better known to its Chairman, B Sairam.

Contractors and vendors at some CIL establishments are reportedly still being required to submit hard-copy bills, even in triplicate, before their invoices enter the payment process.

But the real pain begins after submission.

Payments can take months.

For contractors and vendors, this is not merely a paperwork nuisance. It is their working capital being locked up while salaries, suppliers, GST, bank dues and operational expenses continue to run.

CMPDI: An eight-month wait

The case of Central Mine Planning & Design Institute (CMPDI) makes the issue particularly uncomfortable.

This publication has seen the invoice and correspondence relating to a vendor whose bill was submitted to CMPDI in January 2026.

As of September 7, 2026, the payment is still pending.

The vendor has repeatedly sought intervention through emails and messages. Communications were also sent to the CMD, CMPDI, and the CMD’s Technical Secretary.

Yet the payment remains unresolved.

The obvious question is:

How can a vendor’s invoice remain unpaid for nearly eight months despite repeated attempts to bring the matter to the attention of the top management of a CIL subsidiary?

And if there was a genuine deficiency, objection or contractual reason for withholding the payment, why was the matter not communicated and resolved promptly?

Eight months is not a routine administrative delay.

For a vendor, it is eight months of blocked money.

The digital contradiction

What makes the situation even harder to justify is that Coal India already has digital infrastructure for bill tracking, e-billing and vendor invoice management.

So why should contractors still be required to submit multiple physical copies?

If the paper requirement is mandated by a statutory, audit or regulatory rule, CIL should identify that rule.

If it is merely an internal practice, then why has it survived in an organisation that possesses the technology to eliminate it?

A digital workflow can show exactly when an invoice was submitted, who processed it, where it is pending and how long it has remained there.

Paper does not provide that level of accountability.

Who is accountable?

Coal India’s contractors and vendors are not asking for preferential treatment.

They are asking for something far more basic:

Submit the invoice once. Track it online. Know who is responsible. Get paid within a defined timeframe.

CIL should therefore disclose how many contractor and vendor bills are pending beyond 30, 60, 90 and 180 days, the average time taken to clear invoices and the reasons for prolonged delays.

And in the CMPDI case, the questions are even more direct:

Why is a January 2026 invoice still unpaid?

Where exactly is the bill stuck?

Who is responsible for the delay?

Why did repeated communications to the CMD and Technical Secretary fail to resolve it?

And the biggest question of all:

If Coal India has the technology to process bills digitally, why are its contractors still being forced into a paper trail — and then left waiting for their money?

Coal India may be India’s coal titan.

But for its contractors and vendors, a Maharatna-sized organisation should not mean a months-long wait for payment and a billing system stuck in the paper age.