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CHENNAI - Coal India Ltd, the world's largest coal miner, could venture into solar wafer manufacturing and wants to "aggressively" participate in the country's solar energy auctions, its chairman told Reuters on Tuesday.

"Coal as you know, we're going to lose business in the next two-three decades. Solar will take over coal slowly as a major energy provider in the coming years," Pramod Agarwal said in an interview.

"We are just exploring the possibilities where we can invest in solar wafer production, nobody is (currently) there in the country," he said.

Agarwal also said its joint venture with state-run NLC India Ltd plans to invest around 125 billion rupees ($1.73 billion) in solar power projects with a capacity of 3,000 megawatts (MW), of which Coal India would invest about 60 billion rupees by March 2024.

($1 = 72.4450 rupees)