On June 14th, the Ministry of Coal issued a statement saying that the new Coal Minister, Mr. G Kishan Reddy, shall launch the 10th round of commercial coal block auctions during the next week. During the 10th round of the auction, about 62 blocks shall be offered without end-user restrictions. The Coal Minister has directed the officials to ensure complete transparency and revenue maximisation while auctioning the coal blocks for commercial mining. Coal produced from these commercial blocks is permitted to be sold by the allottee in the free market.
The commercial coal block auction was launched in 2020, opening coal mining to the private sector for the first time without the burden of a specific end-use. Since then, during the last nine rounds, the Ministry of Coal has successfully auctioned 107 coal blocks with 256 MT peak-rated capacity. So far, 11 commercial coal blocks have been operationalised. During the last year, 17.5 MT of coal was produced from commercial blocks. The Ministry of Coal has developed a coal block portal on PM Gatishakti National Master Plan to facilitate proper visibility of geographical features for bidders.
