Core group to work on distribution of coal

KOLKATA: The Union coal ministry has constituted a core group to formulate guidelines for a comprehensive National Coal Distribution policy. This is also perhaps the first serious attempt to work out modalities of distributing coal to key user industries like power, steel, cement and fertilisers.

The move follows a meeting held between Coal India Ltd (CIL) and its major consumers in New Delhi recently.

“One of the suggestions was to fix the supply of coal to different sectors, as a percentage of CIL’s total production, with the clause that supply would go up in proportion to an increase in CIL’s production levels,� Mr N C Jha, chief general manager (quality control), Coal India, told ET.

He attended the meeting along with Mr Shashi Kumar, chairman, Coal India. The ministry has also decided to bring in some major changes in the allocation of coal blocks to private players for captive mining.