(FE)
Union coal minister Pralhad Joshi said that India is currently one of the lowest in terms of per capita consumption of power as compared to the developed countries, and electricity demand here is expected to double by 2040.
The government had offered 67 blocks under the second round of auction in August for commercial mining, out of which only eight mines could be put up for final bidding. In the maiden auction round under the commercial coal mining policy, held in November last year, as many as 19 mines out of the 38 offered could be auctioned off. Currently, the government is also working on the second round of bidding for 11 coal mines which had received only single bid in the second tranche of auction. A similar ‘second attempt’ was conducted after the maiden auction tranche in 2020, and four coal mines which had fetched single bids in the first round were put up for re-auction. Of these, only the Kuraloi North block could be auctioned in June this year, with Vedanta being the successful bidder.
These coal assets, with no end-use restrictions, are being auctioned off through the new market-determined revenue share model that replaced the fixed fee/tonne regime that had earlier turned off private investors. Out of the 3.4 lakh million tonne of total coal reserve in the country, public sector undertakings own currently own blocks with combined reserves of nearly 2 lakh MT.
