The board of directors of Coal India Limited is meeting today to decide whether it will sign fuel supply agreements (FSAs) with power companies or not.

This meeting is very important for both power companies and for CIL. The additional secretary of coal ministry and acting chairman of Coal India Limited, Zohra Chatterjee, will take the decision on FSA after this meeting, sources said.

However, according to the sources, non-official board members are not in favour of signing FSAs. It is mandatory that the FSA proposal should be cleared by the board before signing it with different power companies. The number of non-official directors or nominated directors can change the dynamics of the proposal. Significantly there are seven non-official directors which is a sufficient number to turn down this proposal.

Non-official directors think that CIL cannot arrange sufficient coal for power projects and hence should not sign FSAs. The coal ministry, on the other hand, wants CIL to sign FSAs following instructions from the Prime Minister’s Office.