Thaindian News

Kolkata, May 24 (IANS) The central government will consider competitive bidding for coal blocks, but only after allocating blocks to state-run Coal India Limited (CIL) and he state governments, Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal has said.

“Our priority is Coal India Limited (for allocating coal blocks). But it is not that we will give all these (blocks) to CIL. Second priority is state governments. If coal blocks are left out after that, then we will give those for competitive bidding,” Jaiswal told reporters on the sidelines of a CIL function here Monday evening.

“Bidding process will be started soon,” he added.

On e-auctions of coal, he said the ministry had no plan to stop them as those who did not get coal from CIL, got it through this process.

“We are doing e-auction. After the order of the Supreme Court, the process has been started. We do not have any plan to stop e-auction,” he said.

Stating that there was a problem of coal offtake, the minister said: “We are not getting required number of rakes from railways. I gave a suggestion to the railway ministry that we have money and you (railways) have infrastructure. If you have dearth of money, then we can finance the rakes. But the condition is only coal will be transported through the rakes.”

“I hope that my proposal will be accepted,” he said.

On a possible price revision of coal, Jaiswal said it will depend on wage revision in CIL.

“We will do wage revision before July. Then we will see how much extra load CIL has to take,” he said.

Asked when a coal regulator would be set up, the minister said he hoped that a bill in this regard will be introduced in parliament within four to six months.

He also said he was not in favour of CIL importing coal from other countries.

“CIL was not set up to import coal. Requirement from it is to produce more coal. If there is need to import coal, then other agencies should import it. If there is any requirement, then we will try to import coal from foreign governments,” he added.