The first round of auctions for 31 coal blocks has surpassed the Centre’s expectations with proceeds set to cross ₹2-lakh crore, including the royalty amounts.

The sale of blocks belonging to two categories — those already producing (18) and those ready-to-produce (13) — which started on February 14 ended on Monday.

The Aditya Birla Group cornered the most number of blocks — five — bidding through Hindalco and UltraTech. Naveen Jindal’s Jindal Power Ltd, Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta Group, and GMR won two blocks each. Gautam Adani’s Adani Power managed only one ready-to-produce block despite submitting bids for all the power sector blocks.

“The transparency in the auctions has paid rich dividends,” Coal Secretary Anil Swarup told BusinessLine .

Swarup said there will be around ₹97,000 crore of additional benefits from the lower electricity tariff through the reverse auction of the coal blocks for the power sector.

While the bid amounts have been better than what the Coal Ministry expected, there were hurdles in the auction process itself. Two assets had to be taken off the block due to ongoing litigation, while five were dropped on lack of interest. One block, Jamkhani in Odisha, will be auctioned later.

These blocks will now be handed over to a ‘custodian’ to ensure that production continues. Producing blocks saw higher bids than the ready-to-produce assets. The former set fetched the host States ₹1.22 lakh crore while the latter group brought in around ₹80,000 crore.

The caution among the buyers for the latter set was evident from the bid amounts.

While seven of the 18 producing blocks sold for over ₹2,500 a tonne, the ready-to-produce blocks got a maximum bid of ₹2,291/tonne.

Lowest bid

The lowest winning bid yet was ₹108/tonne from Jindal Power Ltd for Gare Palma IV/2&3. The bid is under examination.

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