Soren assures revision of royalty for thermal coal

Bhubaneswar, Jun 17 (UNI) Union Coal Minister Sibu Soren today assured that his Ministry will consider the revision of royalty for the thermal coal.

Mr Soren told newsmen here that the revision of coal royalty has been carried out as per the policy and maintained that any upward revision on the coal royalty would ultimately put burden on the common man.

He expressed his ignorance when the newsmen drew his attention to the repeated request of the Orissa government to raise the royalty for E and F grade of coal available in the state and generally used in thermal power plant.

Mr Soren said during the last three months, he had met Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik once, but the latter had never raised the issue before him. He also made it clear that so far, he had not received any request from the state government for upward revision of the thermal coal.

Orissa has been losing nearly Rs 100 crore every year due to the non-revision of thermal coal, official sources said.

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