The Ministry of Coal (MoC) has begun sales of abandoned coal mines under the second tranche of auctions. The sales process was launched by the Union Minister of Coal, Mines and Parliamentary Affairs, Pralhad Joshi, during the National Coal Conclave and Exhibition 2022 held recently.
These mines, spread across the coalfields of state-run miner-Coal India Ltd (CIL), have discontinued their operations owing to several factors. The ministry in an attempt to bring these mines back into operation will auction them on a revenue sharing model.
The ministry has not specified the number of mines that would be auctioned in this round of sales. However, CIL subsidiary- Eastern Coalfields Ltd (ECL) – was the first to float tender for its Girmint-KD Incline mine in this round.
The Girmint mine is located in Raniganj coalfields of West Bengal and possesses an extractable reserve of 17.81 mllion tonnes. The mine would be leased out on a mine-developer-operator (MDO) model for a tentative period of 25 years.
Bid evaluation would be carried out on a single stage two-part bidding process. The last date of bid submission is 16 January, 2023.
Status of sales in first tranche
For the first phase, CIL had identified 20 such mines that are spread across 5 subsidiaries, namely Eastern Coalfields Ltd (ECL), Bharat Coking Coal Ltd (BCCL), Central Coalfields Ltd (CCL), South Eastern Coalfields Ltd (SECL) and Western Coalfields Ltd (WCL). Total extractable reserves of these mines were assessed at around 380 mnt.
The sale of these mines is currently ongoing. In the technical round, a total of 20 bids were received against 11 coal mines. This would be followed by the financial bid round that accompanies bid evaluation before the mines are handed over to the successful bidders.
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