Coal, for the previous few decades has been the most important source of energy and shall continue to be in the near predictable future. With an overwhelming dependence of almost all major industries on coal, coal mining, extraction is predicted to expand manifolds in the years to come. Coal mining and its allied activities like its transportation, washing etc have numerous prejudicious effects on the environment but the greatest brunt is borne by the vegetation in the adjoining areas, the first and foremost being the clearance of vast forest tracts to set up mining infrastructure resulting in significant losses to vegetation cover and disturbance of the biodiversity. The plants growing in and around the mining areas exhibit a general poor health with visible injury as well as loss of foliage, stunted growth, reduced leaf area. In physiological terms they exhibit higher phenol concentration in their leaves, higher rate of transpiration and reduced photosynthetic rate. The local flora is also threatened by exotic species invasion, which with their numerous competitive advantages often disturb the local floristic composition. Although these adverse effects on vegetation are a matter of serious concern, exhaustive studies have not been conducted in this regard.