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The bidding for first round of auctions is expected to be fierce for coal blocks previously owned by Jindal Power Ltd, GVK Power Ltd, Usha Martin Ltd and Hindalco.
Tender documents for these mines — which are already producing coal — have been bought by around 20 bidders each, a senior Coal Ministry official said, without disclosing the names of the interested parties.
The Centre has put on offer 82 blocks — 36 for state-owned entities on special preference, 23 producing blocks, and 23 ready-to-produce assets. The auctions for the producing blocks will be completed first.
On January 29, the last date for purchasing tender documents of the producing mines, 310 documents had been picked up. Most blocks have seen over 10 bidders purchase the documents while seven have nearly 20 potential buyers, the official told BusinessLine . The highest number of tender documents bought has been for Gare Palma IV-7 block in Chhattisgarh, previously owned by Sarada Energy Ltd with mineable reserves of 60.47 million tonnes.
Parbatpur Central block in Jharkhand, which was earlier allotted to Electrosteel Castings Ltd, has seen the least number of tender documents purchased with only five bidders, despite the block having mineable reserves of 228.12 million tonnes. Officials did not give any reason.
The 23 blocks have total mineable reserves of around 1.37 billion tonnes, according to the details on the e-auction portal.
Technical bidThe bidders will now have to submit a technical bid with a price offer by February 3. The bids will be opened the same day. The price offer in the technical bid will decide the ranking of the bidders and that would be used to decide the top 50 per cent of the qualifiers. The financial bidding is expected to take place on February 15. The technical bids are crucial as those interested need to submit a price offer for qualification to the next stage.
According to the official, there have also been 125 downloads of tender documents from 56 distinct bidders for the 23 ready-to-produce mines.
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