Coal Ministry of India receives 69 applications from PSUs for 36 coal blocks

As Indian government has opened application submission for coal blocks allocation, a number of state owned companies have aggressively put up applications for coal blocs. NTPC, one of largest the public sector undertaking for power generation has put in eight applications for coal blocks.

States like Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana have been the major applicants for coal block allocations followed by Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Gujarat.

Government has received a total of 69 applications for coal allocation. The central government has offered 36 coal blocks for allotment process for re-allocation of cancelled coal mines. Many state and public sector companies lost their coal allocations due to the Supreme Court judgment in August 2014 which ruled most of the allocations to be illegal. The fresh process will allot mines to these companies. To ease the allotment process, government has combined some blocks and limited the list to 23.

The list allots only one block for end-use in the steel sector and the others are for power generation.

The applications were opened by the nominated authority of the re-allocation process from the ministry of coal. The winners will be decided by the ministry of coal and would be announced on 23rd February.

The one coal block reserved for the steel sector is Sitanala in Jharkhand and the Steel Authority of India is the sole bidder for this.

National Aluminium Company( Nalco) has also given a technical application for a block reserved for the power sector, indicating its interest in generating thermal power.

The ministry is also putting 46 coal blocks for auction by private companies.