As many as 53 bids have been received from 37 companies, including JSW, Jindal Steel & Power Ltd (JSPL), Vedanta and Hindalco Industries, for 20 coal mines that have been put up for sale for commercial mining. The auction process of 88 mines for sale of coal was launched by the Ministry of Coal on October 12, according to an official statement.
“A total of 53 bids have been received for 20 coal mines of which 16 are fully explored mines and four are partially explored mines,” it said.
Two of these mines are coking coal blocks and the remaining 18 mines are non-coking coal blocks.
Two or more bids have been received for 10 coal mines, it said.
The last date of submission of technical bid was Tuesday. As part of the auction process, technical bids comprising online and offline bid documents were opened on Wednesday in the presence of the bidders.
A total of 37 companies have submitted their bids both offline and online in the auction process. The other companies which also submitted their bids are BALCO, Jindal Power and Sunflag Iron & Steel among others.
The maximum of 12 bids were made for NamchikNamphuk coal block, followed by seven for Utkal C block, five for Bijahan mine among others.
Bids will be evaluated by a multi-disciplinary technical evaluation committee and technically qualified bidders would be shortlisted for participation in the electronic auction to be conducted on MSTC portal from January 7, next year.
After successful auction of 28 coal mines in the first two tranches, Ministry of Coal had in October launched the auction process of 40 new coal mines, 21 new mines under CM(SP) Act and 19 new mines under the tranche three of MMDR Act.
With coal mines rolling over from previous tranche, there shall be a total of 88 coal mines on offer, the coal ministry had said.
Total geological resources of about 55 billion tonnes of coal are on offer from these 88 mines, of which 57 are fully explored mines and 31 are partially explored mines. There are four coking coal mines on offer.
Mines are spread across 10 coal bearing states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, the Ministry had said.
