Adani Enterprises wins Gondulpara coal mine bid in Jharkhand

Adani Enterprises Ltd placed the winning bid for the Gondulpara coal mine in Hazaribagh district of Jharkhand, on the sixth day of commercial coal mine auctions, said a government official.

Aditya Birla Group’ EMIL Mines and Minerals Resources Ltd, India Coke and Power Pvt Ltd and Vedanta Ltd were also vying for the block having a geological reserve of 176.33 million tonnes.

So far, 18 coal mines have been auctioned since the bidding began on Monday. The last day of the auction is expected to be Monday, with one more coal mine Gare Palma IV/7 in Chhattisgarh left to be bid out.

The mines are being awarded on a revenue-sharing basis, while earlier blocks were allocated to companies on the payment of fixed amounts per tonne. As part of the two-stage auction process, a bidder has to quote the percentage revenue share over the reserve price. There will be no restriction on the sale and utilization of coal from these mines. The winning bids for the 18 auctioned coal mines over the week has been received from firms such as Adani Enterprises Ltd, Jindal Power Ltd, Vedanta Ltd, Hindalco Industries Ltd, JMS Mining Pvt Ltd, Aurobindo Realty and Infrastructure Pvt Ltd, Andhra Pradesh Mineral Development Corp. Ltd, Aditya Birla Group-owned EMIL Mines and Minerals Resources Ltd, Fairmine Carbons Pvt Ltd and Chowgule and Company Pvt Ltd among others.

While a total of 38 coal mines were initially put-on auction by the coal ministry, a total of 19 mines are being bid out under the 11th tranche of auction under the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Act, 2015, located across Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Maharashtra. There were initially 76 bids from 42 companies for 23 coal mines, with the remaining 15 mines not getting any bids.

India’s coal requirement is expected to go up to 1123 million tonnes (mt) by 2023 from the present levels of around 700 mt. The earlier plan was to mine 1.5 billion tonnes of coal by 2020. Despite having the world’s fourth largest coal reserves, India imports around 235 million tonnes (mt) of coal, of which around 135mt can be been met from domestic reserves.