New regime for quality coal supply from January 1: Anil Swarup

New Delhi: Taking forward steps to bring in transparency in the coal sector, the government Monday announced to bring in a new regime for sampling and testing of the dry-fuel from January 1, to ensure supply of quality coal to consumers.

The step is aimed at putting an end to any controversies regarding quality of coal supplied by Coal India, which has been the bone of contention between power utilities like NTPC and the coal behemoth.

"New regime for sampling and testing of coal to become operational from 1st January 2016," Coal Secretary Anil Swarup today said.

"Testing of quality will ensure that the customer pays for the quality that is determined independently... Coal will also be crushed before supply from January 1," Swarup told PTI.

Samples for coal quality analysis will be collected by selected agencies as per BIS norms, he said in a tweet adding, "Results will be available within 18 days."

Coal India Ltd (CIL), which accounts for about 80 percent of the domestic dry-fuel production supplies coal to power and other utilities.

"CIMFR to select Third Party Agencies to carry out the work of sampling and analysis," Swarup said in another tweet.

The Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research (CIMFR) Dhanbad, is a constituent laboratory of Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) and aims to provide R&D inputs for the entire coal-energy chain from mining to consumption.

Swarup said, "To ensure supply of quality coal by Coal India, transparent process (is being) put in place for sampling and analysis."

Last week, Swarup had said the government has taken a decision to supply crushed coal from January 1.

"We took a decision to ensure that coal is crushed to requisite levels before it is transported and from January 1, 2016 all coal will be crushed to that level before it is transported except where you have a pit head plant that does not require such crushing," he had said.

The secretary also said that Coal India is "well on way of achieving 550 million tonne coal production target" for the current fiscal and has crossed the 300-MT output mark.

He had said the coal production this year was growing at around 9 percent, the highest ever growth and consequent to the increase, the coal-starved power utilities now have "an inventory of about 19 days" and imports have decreased in the past four months.

"Overall all there is a reduction of 4.56 percent (in imports) as compared to previous year," he had said.

The coal PSU is also setting up 15 washeries to supply clean coal to the consumers.

The issue of coal quality had earlier resulted in standoff between the country's largest power producer NTPC and the world's largest coal producer Coal India (CIL) after the NTPC had alleged that it was being supplied inferior quality of coal by CIL.

After the government's intervention it was decided that third party mechanism would be introduced to check the quality of coal.