New Delhi: The sixth day of commercial coal mine auctions is expected to see Adani Enterprises Ltd, Aditya Birla Group’s EMIL Mines and Minerals Resources Ltd, India Coke and Power Pvt Ltd and Vedanta Ltd vying for Gondalpara mine in Hazaribagh district of Jharkhand.
The Saturday auction comes in the backdrop of Aditya Birla Group-owned EMIL Mines and Minerals Resources Ltd and Aurobindo Realty and Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd on Friday placing the winning bids for Radhikapur (East) coal mine in Odisha and Urma Paharitola mine in Jharkhand, respectively.
The last day of the auction is expected to be 9 November, with one more coal mine Gare Palma IV/7 in Chhattisgarh left to be bid out.
So far, 17 coal mines have been auctioned since the bidding began on Monday. The bids are being awarded on a revenue-sharing basis, while earlier blocks were allocated to companies on the payment of fixed amounts per tonne.
As part of the two-stage auction process, a bidder has to bid for the percentage revenue share over the reserve price. There will be no restriction on the sale and utilization of coal from these mines.
While a total of 38 coal mines were initially put-on auction by the coal ministry, a total of 19 mines are being bid out under the 11th tranche of auction under the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Act, 2015, located across Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Maharashtra. There were initially 76 bids from 42 companies for 23 coal mines, with the remaining 15 mines not getting any bids.
The winning bids for the earlier auctioned coal mines have been received from firms such as Adani Enterprises Ltd, Jindal Power Ltd, Vedanta Ltd, Hindalco Industries Ltd, JMS Mining Pvt Ltd, Aurobindo Realty and Infrastructure Pvt Ltd, Andhra Pradesh Mineral Development Corp. Ltd, EMIL Mines and Minerals Resources Ltd, Fairmine Carbons Pvt Ltd and Chowgule and Company Pvt Ltd among others.
India’s coal requirement is expected to go up to 1123 million tonnes (mt) by 2023 from the present levels of around 700 mt. The earlier plan was to mine 1.5 billion tonnes of coal by 2020. Despite having the world’s fourth largest coal reserves, India imports around 235 million tonnes (mt) of coal, of which around 135mt can be met from domestic reserves.
