CIL asked not to implement new rates now

The Calcutta high court has asked state-run Coal India not to implement the new pricing regime in West Bengal till January 16.

The Kolkata-based company had shifted to the international pricing, based on gross calorific value (GCV), from January 1. A division bench, hearing a public interest litigation filed by activist Subhas Datta, said it was “not an order but an observation.”

“This was unwarranted price rise. CIL controls 90 per cent of the supply in the country. In the last three years, its profit has soared 500 per cent. The coal sector was nationalised because private players were taking unreasonable profit. If CIL does the same, it is not reasonable. That is why the court has asked it to put on hold implementation of the new price rate till January 15,” said Datta. The next hearing will be on January 16.

After the company entered the GCV regime, the Mamata Banerjee-led government had written to the power and coal ministry asking to review the decision. It even tried to mobilise a common stand of non-Congress ruled states against the rise.

“I have already informed the company chairman. We will strongly protest against this and try to stop it,” state power minister Manish Gupta told Business Standard.

From 1970s onwards, CIL followed the Useful Heat Value (UHV) dividing coal into seven grades from A-G. According to CIL, through the implementation of the GCV system, the prices would witness an average rise of 10 to 15 per cent.