Coal mining especially of opencast type results in derangement of landscape pattern and destruction of overlying vegetation. During excavation, huge overburden dumps and voids are formed (Namdeo, 1989). Soil of these dumps is the mixture of coal particle and rocky substances and generally known as mine spoils (Mitchell, 1959). The spoil shows adverse effect on the growth of vegetation due to low organic carbon content, unfavorable pH, oxygen deficiency (Agarwal et al., 1993) and low water holding capacity (Vogel, 1982) along with inadequate nutrient conditions (Jha and Singh, 1991).

In spite of such stress factors and other environmental constraints, the plant communities were not only thriving in the mine overburdens but also proceeding towards the attainment of stability through natural succession (Das et al., 2013; Biswas et al., 2013; Roy et al., 2014 a, b), however it is extremely lengthy process (Dobson et al., 1997). In order to optimize conditions for fast and successful revegetation through suitable amendment it is necessary to understand the status of the damaged site in view of spoil characteristics and vegetation (Reddy and Reddy, 2001;