The new Union minister of state for coal, Santosh Bagrodia, did a U-turn on Saturday to clarify that the government does not want to overhaul the new coal distribution policy now being rolled out. "The new policy is a well framed policy and we will work under the broad guidelines of it,' Bagrodia said. On Friday, at his first interaction with a city chamber and the media, Bagrodia had made some statements implying that the policy, launched in October 2007, would be turned on its head. Bagrodia said on Saturday that he was not looking for any revision of the new policy. However, he said, all industries should get coal at the same price, and this may require some fine-tuning in the system. The minister, into his job for less than a month now, said the coal ministry would ensure that small industries get coal at the price charged to bigger industries and that there is no discrimination in pricing. Coal India officials told FE that the new policy has done away with the classification of consumers into core and non-core sectors, implying that all segments would be charged the same price. But, with the power sector alone picking up 80% of its production, the other consumers face supply shortages, forcing small-scale consumers to fend for themselves and buy from the open market at higher rates. Bagrodia said Coal India has to ensure that there is no short supply. "We currently have a stock of 47 million tonne and we propose to liquidate it so that there is abundant supply in the market,' Bagrodia said. "We are discussing with the railways and also working with the road transport sector for lifting higher quantities of coal,' Bagrodia said. He said that Coal India would sell 15m tonne via the e- auction platform in May.