The coal ministry will charge even government-owned Coal India Ltd (CIL) a "reserve price" for the coal blocks allotted to it, a senior coal ministry official revealed.

The official told Business Standard that the ministry had decided to not to allot any coal reserves for free. The coal ministry has recently allocated 116 blocks to the public sector company, and most of these coal blocks are yet to be explored.

Sharing the new policy, the official said, "We are going to ask CIL to pay a reserve price for all the 116 blocks allocated to the company last month. No reserves would be allocated for free now."

The reserve price for the state-owned miner would be based on the location of the acreage, the quality of coal in the blocks, and the openness of the mining lease.

The new policy is expected raise the price of coal sold by the public sector coal miner.

Meanwhile, Power Secretary P Uma Shankar has accused CIL of hurting power sector investments by blocking import of coal and its sale to power companies at a discount as suggested by the Central Electricity Authority.

Shankar wrote a letter to Coal Secretary S K Srivastava, asking CIL to compensate for the huge losses that power companies suffered due to shortage of coal.