Piyush Goyal

Coal and power minister Piyush Goyal says the ministry is ready to divest more stake in state controlled Coal India in order to abide by Sebi‘s norms.

Main agenda on Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu's list are funds for development, ease in train congestion and bringing bullet train to the country.

With the Narendra Modi government completing a year in office, a ministry that has come in for special mention is Piyush Goyal‘s power and coal ministries.

Aiming to clear bottlenecks in the domestic coal supply, Power and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal today said the government is working on a policy that will allow electricity generating firms to swap fuel linkages.

Watch accompanying videos of Piyush Goyal, MoS for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy, Rana Kapoor, MD & CEO of Yes Bank and Hemant Contractor, Chairman of PFRDA share their views and thoughts at Remaking India, the Mint Special conclave for post budget analysis presented by Yes Bank.

CNBC-TV18‘s Anshu Sharma caught up with Power and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal at the sidelines of the Growth Net Summit to get a sense of how the mechanism of importing gas for stranded power projects will work.

The government will auction the gas via a reverse bidding process to ensure that power tariffs do not go up. Each plant can bid up to 30 percent of its plant load factor.

Ashok Khurana, DG, Association of Power Producers, said the decision is not on gas pooling in real sense but is basically importing gas and then subsidising for stranded plants.

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Power Minister Piyush Goyal reflected upon the successfully-concluded coal block auctions as well as the passage of the MMDR bill. Please watch video for the full interview.

The central government will be taking the final decision on whether to re-auction these three coal mines or not based on the report submitted by the committee.

Monnet Power has also one another coal block which is Mandakini in JV with Jindal India Thermal plant. It also has plans to expand 660 megawatt capacity in the power sector.

Power and coal minister, Piyush Goyal said proceeds from coal block auctions so far have crossed Rs 1.86 lakh crore, which was the figure quoted by Official auditor CAG for the estimated loss of revenue under the previous government's coal block allotment

In less than a week, auctions of 11 blocks for the power sector have netted around Rs 60,000 crore. In all, 204 coal blocks will be auctioned in a phased manner, following the Supreme Court‘s order canceling the earlier allocations.

JSPL had contested the change of end use of Utkal B1 and Gare Palma IV/6 from steel to power.

The government currently holds 89.65 percent stake in CIL. As per the minimum shareholding norms for listed companies, the government needs to lower its stake in the state-run behemoth to 75 percent.

Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy Piyush Goyal had a marathon meeting with the labour unions at Coal India.

On gas price pooling, power minister Piyush Goyal says that the government will have to work out the economics and though the idea is under consideration, it has very small significance in the overall scheme of things.

At CNBC-TV18 Inclusive India Awards, Power Minister Piyush Goyal said the government has been taking initiative to provide better skill development programmes for the masses. For this it is planning to engage more with private sector and take up the role of a facilitator.

According to Power Minister Piyush Goyal, among the accounts opened so far, almost 70 percent do not have balance but have been opened to connect rural India directly to the government .

Power Minister Piyush Goyal met Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan to chalk out the rescue package that may involve rescheduling of loans to power companies as well as making available fuel at affordable price through means like pooling of average cheaper domestic gas price with costly imported LNG.