A Bill to set up a coal regulatory authority may be placed in Parliament during the winter session.
“The Coal Regulatory Bill will be presented in Parliament in the winter session,” Coal Secretary, S.K. Srivastava, said here at a conference on ‘Developing Regulatory Framework for Indian Coal Sector: International Practices’ organised by Infraline Energy.
He said that the Ministry is still examining the option of issuing an executive order to set up the coal regulator, which is being vetted by the Law Ministry.
The coal regulator, he said, will design the methodology based on which Coal India will fix the fuel prices.
The winter session of Parliament is scheduled to be held from December 5-20.
The Cabinet had approved the draft Bill on setting up the coal regulatory authority in June.
A panel of ministers had earlier approved the draft Bill, which seeks to set up an independent regulatory authority for the coal sector to address issues such as supply and quality.
The Secretary said a mechanism for third-party sampling of coal quality has been put in place on October 1.
The proposed authority will also regulate the testing methods for declaring the grade or quality of coal, specify the procedures for automatic coal sampling and adjudicate disputes between parties, monitor the closure of mines and approve the mining plans, among others.