Shivani, 1st woman excavation engineer, shatters glass ceiling

Gone are the days when only men covered in soot would clamber out of the inhospitable and exacting confines of a coal mine.

Breaking the glass ceiling,

Shivani Meena, an IIT Jodhpur alumna, has become the first woman excavation engineer to work in an open cast mine at Coal India arm CCL.

She will be posted at CCL'S Rajrappa project, one of the important enterprises of the coal mining behemoth. Until now the position belonged to men.

The feat fo lows another milestone when Akanksha Kumari became Coal India's first woman mining engineer to work in an underground mine at CCL'S Churi facility in North Karanpura area in Jharkhand.

"Nari Shakti (women power) all the way! Congratulations @ CCL Ranchi. Hoping that this will open avenues for more female professionals to join the mining sector," Union Coal Minister Pralhad Joshi said in a tweet.