Auctions for the 21 ready-to-produce coal blocks have been put off to March 2. This follows a petition filed by Sarda Energy and Minerals Ltd in the Delhi High Court.
The names of the qualified bidders will now be announced on March 2 with the auction to be completed between March 4 to March 8, Coal Secretary Anil Swarup tweeted on Tuesday.
Sarda Energy had asked for removal of the initial price offer from the technical bid stage and that participants eligible for the financial bid should not be decided on the basis of the price offer.
In the on-going auctions, bidders have to submit a price offer at the technical bid stage. After selecting the technically qualified bidders, the list is further trimmed and 50 per cent of the top bidders according to the price offer are selected, subject to a minimum of five bidders.
The Ministry of Coal’s intent was to prevent cartelisation during the financial bid stage. So far, 19 mines have been auctioned, including two – Gare Palma IV/2&3 – that were sold together.
The e-auctions amounts are expected to fetch the state governments of Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Maharashtra ₹1.09 lakh crore over the entire mine life and royalty of ₹12,801 crore. All the blocks were producing blocks.
The Ministry expects bid amounts to come down for the remaining blocks as some are awaiting statutory green clearances while most don’t have the existing mining infrastructure in place.
By March 31, the Coal Ministry plans to auction 40 blocks and allot 43 blocks to state and central public sector units.
Over the course of the last month, the Ministry has had to drop blocks from the auction list because some were found to be in inviolate areas.
Some blocks were also dropped from the list because the Jabalpur High Court, Madhya Pradesh and the Delhi High Court ordered the Ministry to do so after petitions from previous allottees.
Forest areas
Meanwhile, a memorandum from the Ministry for Environment, Forests and Climate Change, has recommended that two blocks — Marki-Mangli-II in Maharashtra and the Mahan Coal block in Madhya Pradesh — not be auctioned.
The memorandum sent in December said that these blocks are “located in inviolate forest areas”.
“Though Stage-II forest clearance to the Mahan Coal block has already been accorded, the mining in the block has not started. The said block may, therefore, not be auctioned as the block is located in inviolate forest area,” the memorandum reads.
Similarly, in the Marki-Mangli-II block, also located in inviolate forest area, mining has not started.