The seven coal blocks reserved for e-auction to the power sector have mineable reserves of 499.33 million tonnes, of which 69.95 million tonnes have already been extracted till March 31, 2014. Prior allocatees of the seven mines include Hindalco, GVK Power, Jindal Power and CESC.

As a precursor to the issuing of tender documents for the 24 coal blocks to be put under the hammer in the first phase, the Coal Ministry has uploaded brief descriptions of the blocks on the MSTC portal.

Interested bidders can preview the basic details of the blocks before deciding to pay up to ₹5 lakh per mine for detailed information.

The public sector unit MSTC is handling the e-auction process. A registration portal for interested bidders was launched on December 25. Tender documents, brief descriptions of the mines and details on the compensation sought by the prior allocatees will be available for free on the portal.

As per the details put up on the Web site, in the 17 mines reserved for the non-regulated sectors such as steel, cement and captive power plants, the mineable reserves are 875.19 million tonnes, of which 83.9 million tonnes (does not include extraction from Gare Palma IV/1 as Jindal Steel and Power did not provide data) has already been extracted by the previous allocatees.

The prior allocatees include Electrosteel Casting Ltd, JSPL, Monnet Ispat, Prakash Industries and Usha Martin Ltd.

A senior Government official said details on compensation sought by the prior allocatees will be uploaded on the MSTC portal by December 27, along with the tender documents for the 24 mines. Tender and other documents will be sold to interested bidders between December 27 and January 29, 2015.

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