Stating that the coal block auction has received a good response so far, coal secretary Anil Swarup on Friday said more than 100 bid forms have been sold for the first tranche of auction of 42 coal blocks slated to be completed by March 23. “The ministry has seen more than 100 bidding forms bought,” Swarup said.
Out of 101 blocks which the government aims to auction in the first round, as many as 42 operational mines will be auctioned by March 23. The second tranche of 32 blocks will be auctioned in the first week of April.
“The list of coal blocks to be auctioned in the third tranche would be compiled by the third week of April. And the auction of second round of 103 mines will be completed by March, 2016,” Swarup said, adding, the government had not yet decided on the end-use of 103 mines.
The coal secretary said it was estimated that by 2020, the country would require about 1.5 billion tonnes of coal.
“How this amount of coal will come from? What we have worked out is one billion tonne will come from CIL and rest from the non-CIL sector,” he pointed out.
He said the government would take steps to increase domestic coal production and it would not encourage coal import as a policy. “As a policy we are not going to facilitate coal imports, instead we would put our efforts to raise domestic coal production.”
Swarup said.