The ministry of coal on Tuesday said that it has allocated a total of 200 coal mines since the start of the process decades ago. The 200th mine – the Marwatola–II block – was allocated to to Singhal Business.
The ministry on Monday opened the bids for the 12th round of commercial coal blocks’ auction (excluding 6 underground coal blocks). It has so far received bids for 11 coal blocks out of 22 coal blocks put under the hammer.
The round received 41 bids against the 11 coal blocks. A total of 38 bids were received against 8 coal blocks offered in the 12th round. Under the second attempt of the 11th round, a total of 3 coal blocks were put up for auction and 3 bids were received against 3 coal blocks with each block receiving one bid.
Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC), NLC India, Jindal Steel & Power, Western Coalfields, and KSK Mahanadi Power were among the 27 companies that placed their bids.
The government opened up the sector for the private players introducing commercial coal mining through auctioning of coal blocks back in 2020.
Additionally, the coal ministry is targeting to roll out three more auctions of coal mines this fiscal putting as much as 25 mines under the hammer. During the fiscal, 12 mines are expected to obtain Mine Opening Permission and 7 mines are expected to commence coal production, the ministry had said in its action plan for FY26.
The government is targeting creation of additional coal production capacity to boost coal output as well as replace depleting mines.
The ministry has set a target of opening 100 new mines intending to create an addition in coal production capacity of 500 million tonnes per annum by 2029-30. “To achieve this target, it is proposed for operationalization of more than 20 new mines with an aggregate of over 80 million tonnes per annum during FY26, including coal PSUs & commercial/captive mines,” the coal ministry said. In FY25, the government operationalised 13 mines with a capacity of 83 MT.